


Quantagram stories

by skitzofreak



Series: The Holonet Is A Wild Place [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Code breaking, Cuddles, Dealing With Trauma, F/M, Fake Marriage, Healing, Injury, Mushrooms, One Shot Collection, Pranks, Rogue Squadron, bombs and fighter jets and convoys oh my, cake baking, mind altering drugs, mission fics, sherlock holmes fusion, vague themes of consent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-07-01 14:09:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 60,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15775665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skitzofreak/pseuds/skitzofreak
Summary: A series of stories, mostly mission-centric, centered on the crew of Rogue One, as part of a celebration with friends. Current chapter:The wound should have killed him.





	1. Fresh Paint

**Author's Note:**

> This prompt was from @atthelamppost; the prompt was "They just repainted it!" With reference to recent world events.

"Ready?” Jyn asked, her eyes trained through the small, grimy viewport on the rusting door. The warehouse creaked around them, swaying in the constant harsh winds of Myrkr’s Black Tree Plains. Outside, swirls of black dust danced over the long-fossilized corpses of the mighty olbio trees that had fallen in some ancient storm. The Plains were a wasteland of giant black tree trunks turned to stone and the piles of black ash that flaked gently from them. Around the trees, large swathes of open terrain mixed randomly with claustrophobic metal warehouses and shacks huddled in unorganized clumps against the winds. Every now and again, the team caught a glimpse of a long reddish lizard tail slithering over the stony black bark. It wasn’t the worst place Cassian had ever been, not by far, but it definitely wasn’t his favorite.

  
“Uh, yeah,” Bodhi coughed and rubbed his gloved right hand against his side. If they were at base, or on their ship, he would probably be fiddling with the bolts of his wrist under the edge of the glove, a habit he had fallen into after waking up post-Scarif. Of course, if they were somewhere like the base or their ship, Bodhi wouldn’t be so kriffing nervous to begin with. Cassian suppressed a sigh and shoved those unhelpful thoughts back into their place in his mental files – in this case, inside the box labelled “Pointless Speculations.” He tried really hard not to open that box if he could help it.

  
“Standby,” Jyn said without turning around, her eyes narrow as she scanned the open space between the warehouse door and the smaller warehouse ten paces away, over a fallen fossil trunk that no one had bothered to clear. Other than the meager protection of the tree, the area was totally exposed, a patch of dried out grass around the tree and then the open, fossil-studded plains stretching off on either side. The rest of the buildings in this settlement were all situated on the other side of their current hideout, and none of them had a good line of sight on the two doors. That was the reason they’d chosen this route, after all.

  
Still, Cassian thought, brushing his thumb over his blaster hilt to make sure the safety was off, the smugglers who ran weapons to the Imperials here had very random patrols, and there was always the chance one of them would wander this way. What the smuggler boss was hiding in that small, separate warehouse was worth quite a lot of credits, after all.

  
Not that a lot of people knew that. Mostly, Karrde pretended he was just holding some Imperial buddy’s shuttle for him, as collateral against some bargain they had struck. Cassian’s intel suggested otherwise, however, and so he had been sent here to find out, one way or another.

  
Mothma had given him the orders herself, handing him the datapad with a serene nod and hardly any word spoken beyond polite greeting as she floated through Command toward the Bridge of Home One. Cassian strongly suspected that Mothma read his psych evals, probably because he broke rank on the Scarif action and she wanted to keep an eye on him now. The psych evals had been harping on his ‘support network’ for years, although his last one had been oddly positive about it, for a change. Mothma was exactly the sort of person to take every precaution she could, so Cassian was unsurprised to find that Jyn and Bodhi were already waiting for him when he arrived in the hangar to ship out.

  
“They claim they are authorized as backup for this mission,” Kay had complained as Cassian walked into the U-Wing and found Bodhi waving at him from the pilot’s seat and Jyn calmly cleaning her blaster behind him. “But they won’t show me their notarized orders.”

  
“Left them in my other jacket,” Jyn said with a casual shrug.

  
“You don’t have another jacket,” Kay grumped, but he turned back to the console without further protest as Bodhi cheerfully started flipping the start up switches. “I checked. The quartermasters haven’t issued you a second, although you are authorized to requisition one complete set of spare clothing.”

  
Jyn caught Cassian’s eye, and her mouth curved up into a half grin. “I’ll get around to it,” she promised. “Eventually.”

  
“So,” Bodhi coughed in the warehouse, rubbing at the black dust on his nose with his left hand. “I, um, do I stay with you or, or Cassian?” The patchy orange and yellow jacket he wore fell over his hands, a little too big for him. Which was perfect, actually, because none of the smugglers on this particular outpost of Karrde’s operation seemed much interested in clothes that fit them properly. Most of them looked like they had rolled through a thrift shop reject pile and just walked away with whatever stuck to them. Cassian had actually found it harder to dress for this mission than for a deep cover in Imperial territory. Imperial fashion was brutal and rigid, but at least it made sense. Trousers looked like trousers, and the colors were cruel but they didn’t give him a damn headache.

  
Jyn, however, had laughed at the wardrobe options, and she and Bodhi had thoroughly enjoyed picking their ‘disguises.’

  
“Stay with Cassian,” Jyn answered him, tugging her lockpick free from the inner pocket of her red embroidered vest and clutching it in her pink gloved hand. Her other glove was a hideous shade of mustard yellow that should have matched the hideous mustard yellow skirt that hung to her knees over her blue and white patterned trousers. But somehow she had managed to find two entirely different horrible mustard yellows, and they clashed so badly that for the first time in his life, Cassian winced when he looked at her. Not that he was much better. Jyn and Bodhi had _really_ enjoyed dressing him, and he had allowed it. Cassian Andor had many skills, absolutely none of which allowed him to stand up to Jyn and Bodhi when they looked at him with such delight. He had made a half-hearted attempt to avoid the neon green hooded sweater with the zigzag stripes when Bodhi held it out to him, but then Jyn had slipped a red and blue sash around his waist and laughed softly in his ear, and he was lost. Now he looked liked twelve traffic signs smashed together, and every tiny noise made him want to whirl around, certain that he was drawing every eye in the galaxy. But they had all three walked through the middle of the Myrkr smuggling outpost like they were just another crew signing on with Karrde, and no one had lifted a finger to stop them.

  
“Okay,” Jyn said, “Let’s go.” Over her shoulder, Bodhi pressed his gloved hand harder against his side and swallowed, turning to peer nervously back over his shoulder in the gloom of the warehouse behind them.

  
“Wait,” Cassian reached out and caught Jyn’s hand on the door latch. She paused, tilted her head at him enquiringly.

  
Cassian turned back to Bodhi. “Look at me,” he ordered, waiting until Bodhi turned back around to meet his eyes with a start. “Kay worked the probabilities with me,” he said calmly. “The worst likely scenario is that we are found by other smugglers, we show them our contracts, claim to be new, and we get shoved out of the warehouse. Karrde will be notified, he will take between two and four hours to respond, and in that time, Kay will fly the U-Wing to my transponder and pull us out. We fail to find out what’s in the warehouse, but the likelihood that we are ever under fire is below ten percent.”

  
Bodhi sighed. “Yeah, I, yeah. I know. He told me. Although he said, um,” Bodhi rolled his eyes, some of the jittery uncertainty in his face settling. “He also said Jyn was statistically more likely to shoot me than the smugglers.”

  
Jyn stiffened, outraged frown on her face. Cassian squeezed his fingers around hers, still pressed against the door latch.

  
“Because of the unpredictable variable thing,” Bodhi added quickly, raising his palms to her peacefully. “You know, that thing he calls the Jyn Factor?”

  
“He changes that variable a lot,” Cassian commented mildly, rubbing his thumb over Jyn’s knuckles.

  
She stayed tense a moment longer, then her hand relaxed under his and her frown turned sardonic. “Yeah, well, _salt water to corrode his metal anus_ ,” she grumbled, slipping into Huttese. She flipped her hand underneath his and pressed the lockpick to his palm, pulling her blaster free with her other hand. Looked like she had changed her mind, and now wanted him to open the far door while she provided cover.

  
“You can do better than that,” Cassian chided her, although he couldn’t quite suppress the humor tugging at the corner of his mouth.

  
“I’m a little busy at the moment,” Jyn sniffed, the frown now entirely fake on her face, her eyes glittering with amusement. She lowered her chin and looked up at him through her eyelashes in an attempt to hide it, but he knew that trick all too well. “I’ll come up with a really good one before we get back to the ship.”

  
“I look forward to hearing it.”

  
“Uh, okay,” Bodhi said dryly. “I’m ready to go now. If, um, if you two are.”

  
Jyn shot him a look over her shoulder as she turned back to the door, letting Cassian take the lockpick and drop his hand. “Snippy, for a guy in a polka dot dress.”

  
“Robe,” Bodhi held up a metal finger, the blue flowers on his glove stretching with the movement. “And this pattern is very popular in the Albarrio sector.”

  
“No,” Cassian said, resting his blaster down by his leg so it wouldn’t immediately be apparent to someone glancing at them. “It isn’t.”

  
“Go,” Jyn said, and shoved the door open.

  
They darted out between the warehouses and jogged for the target building across the empty patch. The cold wind of Myrkr threaded under Cassian’s sweater and cut through his black and pink trousers, blew gritty dust into his face, and sent a shiver running down his spine. Next to him, Bodhi pulled his orange and yellow jacket tighter around his thin body and stretched his legs to keep up with Cassian’s longer stride. A few steps away, Jyn ducked near the end of the fossilized log and peered around the corner of the bigger warehouse, checking back the way they came. Cassian forced himself to look away, to keep moving towards the far warehouse door.

  
He stepped to the side of the door, feeling Bodhi thump gently against the wall just behind him, and spared one quick glance back at Jyn still kneeling in the grass behind her pitiful cover, her blaster half raised. Then he focused his attention on the door, working her lockpick into the rusty slot and flicking on the security override switch. The lockpick hummed, and the tiny readout screen in the handle flitted through a myriad of possible codelines. Cassian watched, taking in the patterns until one that looked like the correct sequence went by. He tapped the end of the lockpick to select the right code, and ran a quick calculation using the variables the lockpick provided.

  
He tapped the sequence into the blunt end of the handle, held his breath, and twisted the pick.

  
The door clicked. Cassian waited a moment longer, but no alarms blared. He tugged the door open a few centimeters, and had to tighten his grip when a gust of wind tried to tear the metal from his hand and send it flapping open. Still no alarms. He ducked inside, holding the door for Bodhi. Across the way, Jyn cast a quick glance back over her shoulder. He gestured to her sharply, and she swept the area with a final glance before rising to her feet and sprinting across the space to the door. She slipped in like a ghost in front of him, brushing a hand against his chest as she passed. Cassian eased the door shut and took a slow, steady breath. Jyn’s hand pressed against his chest a moment longer, long enough for her to feel the pounding of his heart underneath her palm, and then she pulled away and moved closer to Bodhi.

  
“We made it,” she said aloud, her hand on Bodhi’s shoulder now but her eyes on Cassian.

  
“Yeah,” Bodhi answered, swiping at his face and smiling with nervous relief.

  
Jyn didn’t look away until Cassian nodded. Yes. They made it.

  
“Okay,” Bodhi rubbed his hands together. “Let’s see this “shuttle.” Although if it’s, it’s really just some Imp general’s shuttle, I for one am going to, um, going to be pissed.”

  
“It’s not a shuttle,” Cassian said, feeling some of the bitter taste of the briefing filtering back across his tongue. “It’s a new fighter prototype. Commander Jonasa’s family company has come up with a radical new design, and if the Empire likes it, they’ll get richer than they are now and he’ll get a promotion.”

  
Jyn’s shoulder bumped up against Cassian’s shoulder, and he reigned in the anger that bled into his words. Jonasa was a monster that Cassian had been hunting a long time, a slimeball disguised as a man who profited from both his mother’s weapons deals and his father’s slave trade. He was at the top of several Rebel Intel blacklists, and Cassian had been building a file on his weaknesses for years. It was, unfortunately, a pathetically thin file.

  
And now Jonasa stood poised to catapult himself from _millionaire flunky_ to _Emperor’s new favorite pet,_ if this fighter craft he designed ended up truly being “as lethal as a TIE, for only half the cost!”

  
“Well, let’s take a look,” Bodhi stepped cautiously further into the warehouse. They were in a narrow corridor that looked like it ran around the outer edge of the building, creating a smaller space in the center. There was another heavy metal door set into the wall, but Karrde’s tactic with this secret was to pretend it was nothing worth stealing, so the door wasn’t as reinforced or wired up with traps as it could be.

  
Still, the lock pad that attached to the door looked complex and finicky, and Cassian wasn’t in the habit of taking unnecessary risks. So he stepped back and gestured to the lock, handing Jyn her lockpick as he moved. She strode briskly to the door, and Bodhi shuffled to one end of the corridor to peer around the corner while Cassian moved to the other. Nothing. Distantly, he could hear muffled voices, probably the two guards stationed in the little office at the ‘front’ of the warehouse. Karrde’s records indicated that these were actually clerks, and their only job was to keep inventory of Karrde’s supplies out here in the windswept plains on a planet where hardly anyone ever visited. A small job for small people who liked to keep to themselves and ignore the world around them and didn’t mind if their paycheck came from a criminal.

  
He mentally marked the two voices, in case the files were wrong and they were actually heavily armed and dangerous fighters. By the time he made it back down the short corridor to Jyn, she had the lock open and was waiting patiently to push through the door.

  
Bodhi tiptoed back on Jyn’s other side, and Cassian pulled his blaster, shouldered between Jyn and the door (he ignored her scowl; she’d glower at him for a while after they got back to the ship and then she’d shrug it off), and walked through, leading with his blaster.

  
Nothing moved inside. It was just a dusty hangar, no viewports but a handful of older florescent lights hanging down from the high ceiling. A fine mist of black dust floated in the beams of light, swirling slightly around the large black shape that hunkered ominously in the middle of the space. Cassian did a thorough search of the south side of the area, Jyn mirroring his movements on the right, while Bodhi walked slowly to the black shape and fumbled for the panel that was sitting forlornly in the middle of the duracrete floor.

  
“Clear?” He whispered loudly, his hand hovering over a button on the panel.

Cassian found another heavy door set into the wall, and leaned against it. The muffled voices were just on the other side, talking lazily. He heard the crackle of a holo-projector and the tinny sound of a canned laugh track. “Clear,” he said in a low voice, and made a mental note to remind Bodhi that whispers were actually louder and easier to track than speaking in a controlled tone under the breath.

  
Around the black shape, he heard Jyn call back in the same soft undertone that barely carried, “Clear.”

  
Bodhi tapped the panel, and another series of lights flicked on, illuminating the black shape of the new fighter.

  
It looked…vicious. Hard angles and straight lines, a series of bomb hangars on the wide wings and painted a light-absorbing black. It was pointing almost directly at Cassian’s face, and it made his lungs constrict with instinctive fear. Ugly, brutal, terrifying, and apparently, cheap. The Emperor would fucking love it.

  
Bodhi sniggered.

  
Cassian jolted at the sound, because laughter had not been a reaction he was prepared to hear.

  
“Hey,” Jyn appeared around the side of the fighter. “What’s so funny?”

  
“It’s,” Bodhi clamped his hand over his mouth, his eyes dancing. “What did they call this thing in those memos you found?”

  
“TIE/Line Fighter Variant F,” Cassian supplied. “Although the variant is more of a guess than Analysis wants to admit.”

  
Bodhi’s hand tightened on his face, his eyes wide and shining. Cassian leaned back against the door and absently checked that the holoprojector was still running, with the occasional comment from the two smugglers inside. The rest of his attention honed in on Bodhi’s odd behavior. Was the pressure getting to him? Did the ridiculous disguises and the endless cold wind drive him so far out of his comfort zone that he was hysterical now? Or was the terror of this new thing so great that he was losing it, right here in the warehouse? Cassian should have checked with Bodhi’s doctors before they left, made sure he was stable enough to take into high-pressure zones. (This wasn’t a high pressure zone, not by Cassian’s standards, but he had long ago learned that not everyone measured the world by the same fucked up standard as his own).

  
“Bodhi,” Jyn demanded, her hands still clasped around her blaster and her stance still prepared for a fight, but her eyes narrowed at their friend. “What is so funny?”

  
“It’s a SIE-TIE,” Bodhi burst out, then caught himself and lowered his voice. “I mean, guys, guys, _look at it.”_ He raised his metal hand and jabbed it at the right side of the craft. “Hyperdrive sensor on the upper right stabilizer,” his finger moved down and left. “Slanted intakes under the fuselage curve,” up and across the cockpit, “Infused shield paint.” Bodhi’s voice cracked a little on the last two words, and he coughed to smother an obvious laugh. “Nobody’s used infused shield paint in thirty years. This model was built when the Republic was still around. They’ve just, they’ve just…” he stopped, his mouth dropping open.

  
“So, it’s not a new…thing?” Jyn asked slowly.

  
“After the Clone Wars,” Bodhi spun to face them both, his face animated, his hands sweeping through the air, “just before the Empire, uh, rose, there was a huge shipment of these made, supposedly on the order of the Emperor. Chancellor. Whatever. The story, um, the story changes a bit depending on, you know, who’s telling it. But Sienar Systems made just a ton of them, they were the brand new hot thing, right? Precursor to the actual, um, actual TIE we see today, so they were in big demand with the war and all, and Sienar made a lot and then the war ended and there was this whole shipment that just sort of vanished.” Bodhi shook his head. “It was a low-key kind of conspiracy thing on the holonet for a bit, I read about it as a kid and thought it was, um, anyway,” he shrugged, shaking his head, some of the excitement draining from his face. Jyn moved closer and stood just at his elbow, not quite touching him, her eyes still on his face. If Cassian dared to move away from the door, he would have walked closer and put his hand on Bodhi’s shoulder.

  
As it was, his friend shook off the sudden gloom and cleared his throat. “So, anyway, all these SIE-TIEs go missing, and everyone just sort of forgets about them anyway because the new TIE came out and it was faster and had more fire power and so, and so they were just lost, but look,” he brightened again, turning to look up at the hulking ship. “I think we, uh, we found them.”

  
“I’ve seen the SIE-TIE,” Cassian said cautiously from his post. “It looked…different.” He squinted up at the terrifying thing. “I think.”

  
“Yeah, they were white and grey, before,” Bodhi nodded eagerly. “And it looks like they put a different antenna array on the vertical stabilizer up there. But, uh, sorry,” he spread his hands wide. “It’s a SIE-TIE, alright. Same size, same weapons’ posts, even got the same, um, the same cockpit from what I can see from here. They just, you know, repainted it.”

  
Cassian leaned his head against the wall and let that information percolate in his mind for a moment, while Bodhi cracked a joke to Jyn. She glowered at the fighter craft.

  
This fighter was supposed to be the demo model, brought out here and hidden with the smugglers while Jonasa set up the big demonstration to his superiors, who would be in the sector within a week. Supposedly, this was the only one of it’s kind (it’s new, never-before-seen kind). Imperial contracting companies were forbidden from making more than one or two demonstration craft until they received explicit approval from Coruscant to begin true production. But if this was a scam, if Jonasa was honestly trying to pull one over on the _Emperor_ , if he’d stumbled on an old unregistered shipment of early-stage TIE fighters and somehow thought he could get away with claiming they were a whole new design…then Jonasa had the rest hidden away somewhere, planning to bring them out when he was given the go ahead to begin production. The “cheap cost” would be pure profit for him, at least at first, and he probably thought his regular production factories would pick up the slack when it was time to make more.

  
A bubble of excitement expanded in his chest, small and tempered with the danger of their current situation…but there.

  
His file on Jonasa’s weaknesses was about to expand.

  
“Holoimager,” he called softly, and Bodhi fumbled for his neck, tugging the small imager up from the cord where he’d hidden it down the front of his dress. Robe.

  
“Got it,” Bodhi gave him a thumbs up and started clicking pictures of the ship, smirking to himself as he moved in a brisk circle around it. Cassian was glad he’d given the imager to Bodhi – the pilot knew what parts of the ship were valuable for the analysists to see, which parts would prove what he said about it’s actual origins. His familiarity with the craft made the bubble in Cassian’s chest expand a little further – if this thing was brand new, Bodhi shouldn’t be able to flip open the avionics bay as easily as he could, or locate the maintenance handholds that would let him climb all over it.

  
Across the warehouse, Jyn looked from Bodhi’s gleeful face to Cassian’s more cautious reserve, and even from this distance he could read the supremely unimpressed look in her eyes. She glanced at the control panel, where Jonasa Industries had stamped his logo in huge red letters on the side, and then twisted her mouth into a grimace. _This_ _guy,_ her expression told him, _is a fool_.

  
Cassian grinned at her. _Yes_ , he thought. _And now I know how to hit him._

  
Jyn blinked, startled by his expression, and her grimace softened but didn’t vanish. They weren’t in the most hostile territory in the galaxy, but she wasn’t any more likely to relax out here than he was.

  
Cassian let Bodhi prod the ship for ten minutes, even after it appeared that the pilot’s interest had turned more personal and maybe a little more nostalgic than the mission called for. Then he cleared his throat softly and gestured to the door, back the way they came.

  
Bodhi waved the holoimager at him sheepishly, and tucked it away as he climbed back down. Jyn followed him to the door, and then turned and waited for Cassian.

  
The holoprojector on the other side of the door was still blaring, and one of the smugglers let out a belch. Cassian pushed away from the door and walked towards his friends. Bodhi peered over his shoulder at the disguised old fighter craft and then smiled brightly at Cassian, his eyes laughing though his expression had faded to something more subdued. Jyn stepped to the side to let Cassian slip into place next to her, and bumped her shoulder gently against his as she prepared to push out of the warehouse and lead them on a casual stroll around the outpost. The U-Wing was hidden about half an hour’s walk across the plains, tucked into a pile of fossilized trees that hid it from the outpost. Fortunately, the random patrols never went farther than the fenceline, and the smugglers stationed out here weren’t worried about raids. Talon Karrde was far too powerful in this sector for other smugglers to dare, and the Imperials, obviously, preferred to work with him. They had walked into the outpost without so much as a blink, and Cassian calculated pretty good odds they would walk right again the same way. So long as his horrible outfit didn’t cause any seizures along the way, no one would even remember they had been here.

  
“Well,” Bodhi whispered as they slipped back into the corridor and towards the exit. “This has been kind of a good day, after all.”

  
Jyn rested her hand briefly on Cassian’s chest again, pushing him back so she could walk through the door and out to the plains before him. He raised an eyebrow at her, and she mimicked the expression. He broke first, the smile getting the better of him.

  
“Yes,” he murmured, letting himself enjoy the sensation of her hand trailing down his chest as she dropped it and turned away. “It has.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know if Talon Karrde really traded with Imperials like that, but he did have a lot of operations on Myrkr. The trees are also canon, although I made up the Black Tree Plains. And the, ahem, colorful aesthetics of the Myrkr smugglers.
> 
> The story of the development of the SIE-TIE into the familiar TIE fighter is canon. The story of the lost shipment is based on real world events. As is, funny enough, the idea of someone finding a bunch of old fighters and repainting them.


	2. Rogue Angels

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt from @thestarbirdfromtheashes, who asked for "space Blue Angels for morale." I couldn't quite work the prompt as you wanted, because I couldn't figure out how to get Cassian and Jyn involved, but this was close, I hope.
> 
> [Halm](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Halm) is a canon desert planet full of kyber. The Jewel Box is my own headcanon, based on the [Rainbow Mountains of Peru.](https://www.google.com/search?q=rainbow+mountain+peru&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiRsK7Ao4bdAhUPeawKHXC2CnYQ_AUICigB&biw=1745&bih=857)
> 
>  

“For fuck’s sake,” Jyn growls under her breath, groping for her canteen because she’s got so much dust in her teeth that she can no longer stand it, “just bomb the damn desert. There's nothing else out here, so there won't be any collateral damage.”

At her side, Cassian lies perfectly still on his chest, looking as relaxed as a wealthy Imp on some fancy resort (Jyn doesn’t know what that looks like up close, not really, but she’s seen it in holos). His hair is somehow still combed neatly, only the faintest sheen of sweat on his forehead, and his expression is calm. Jyn wonders what part of his sniper training taught him how to lie flat on his belly for seven hours in a desert and still somehow look like he only just stretched out for a quick rest. Her own hair is a bird’s nest, her face a sweaty mess, and she’s got fine-grit, brightly colored sand _everywhere_. She looks like she just got dragged by her heels backwards through a filthy paint factory.

Cassian has a smear of greenish coloring on his knees that only barely shows up against the brown of his trousers, and when he stands up, his chest will probably show a few colors too. Otherwise, he’s disgustingly clean. Jyn glares at him from the corner of her eye. How the hells does he do that? Is it just that he is so still? Or is there some kind of…force field involved?

“Except us,” Cassian murmurs distractedly, still peering through the macrobinoculars at the sweeping sand hills around them.

Jyn rolls her eyes; he's right, she's being ridiculous, but at the same time... “If we haven’t found the stupid convoy by now,” she argues, tired and grouchy from the heat and grit and frustration of a fruitless mission, “it’s probably not here.”

“Or the Imperials have hunkered down for some reason,” he counters, finally dropping the macros and pushing them towards her. Jyn takes them a little reluctantly, because she’s already spent hours scouring these hills from this vantage point without turning up a thing.

“Then we’ll have better luck scouting,” she stretches her arms out as far in front of herself as she can without getting up, feeling the pleasant pull of sore muscles in her neck and back. If she’s this sore, Cassian’s back must be hideously tight. He’s got all those pins and implants, and he’s been several times more still than she has all day.

“If the X-Wings find the target before we do,” Cassian reminds her reprovingly, taking a quick drink from his own canteen and pulling his sniper scope free from the protective pocket in his jacket, “they might drop on it before we have time to get clear.”

“Assuming we’re close to it,” she grumps, but it’s a pointless argument and they both know it. Their job in this operation is to stake out the high ground over the most likely route the convoy will take and watch the rolling, striped desert hills of Halm’s southern reaches. The X-Wings overhead are supposed to run a pattern sweep over the miles and miles of desert they can’t see. And, of course, to bomb the armored convoy running missiles to the Imperial base on the other side of the desert.

They have to _find_ it first, though. Alliance intel on the convoy has narrowed the path down to a period of two days and a specific section of this admittedly lovely place, the Jewel Box Desert on Halm’s southern hemisphere. To her left, craggy cliffs made of greenish glassy rocks stab at the pale blue sky, too uneven for wheeled vehicles, too fragile for hover engines. If the convoy tries to come through there, the downdraft of their missile transport vehicles will create a glass windfunnel that would slice them all to ribbons and frankly do the rebellion’s job for them. The only real option is through the striped colors of the sandy foothills below. Cassian is almost certain this is the right spot, and Jyn sees no reason to doubt him, but so far the hills have been beautiful and sweaty and totally devoid of Imperial convoys.

Overhead, she thinks she hears a faint rumble of jet engines, and judging by Cassian’s frown, he does too. Some pilot getting too low over the hills, forgetting the altitude restriction meant to keep the Imps from spotting the air search. A moment later, her comm crackles to life, someone transmitting on the All Units frequency she and Cassian shared with the X-Wings.

“Rogue Four,” Antilles’ voice snaps in her ear, “Check angels.”

“Rogue Four,” the pilot responds with professional briskness that doesn’t quite hide the sheepish undertone. “Climbing.”

The comm goes silent again. Cassian and Jyn exchange a look, then he rolls his shoulders and snaps his scope on his rifle, settling behind it to almost perfect stillness again.

Jyn sighs and goes back to scanning the dunes with the macros. To Jyn’s complete annoyance, the lens of the macros seem to gain a pinkish smudge on one side almost the second she lifts them, as if the desert wants to rub in that she is grubby and sweaty while Cassian is still apparently clean. If she can just get him to roll over for a minute so she can see the mess of sweat and colored sand stains on his body, she’ll probably feel a lot better about it. She usually does, when he lets her pin him down, digging her fingers into the tight muscles of his shoulders and neck, maybe sneaking a hand up to muss that neat hair…

But this is a mission, and she’s got priorities, so Jyn shakes her head and shoves the thought away. Convoy first, she tells herself sternly. Fantasies later, preferably after they make it back to the rebel outpost on Halm’s moon and get themselves a shower.

“Contact,” Cassian says abruptly. “Base of the eastern hill. Grey vehicle against red and pink.”

Jyn swings the macros as directed, but all she sees is sand. “Blind,” she says after a beat.

“Mark the green stripe that crests that hill?” Cassian’s hand is suddenly on her lower back, as if he can transmit the precise location to her through his touch. Jyn smirks a little, but doesn’t comment on it.

“Contact,” she focuses the macros on the green stripe and waits.

“Follow the green stripe down until it hits a light blue stripe,” he says quietly.

“Contact.”

“Move left, laterally, across the blue stripe to a pink circular feature in the hillside.”

“Contact.”

“Straight down.”

Jyn pans the macros down and then – “got it,” she grins at him, though she keeps her eyes on the macros, counting three, four, five grey vehicles, tiny with distance but distinct shapes against the chaotic background now that she knows where to look.

“Good,” she can hear the smile in his own voice, but then his hand tenses.

Jyn keeps tally on the convoy, but she doesn’t like the way Cassian’s fingers are tight on her back. “Problem?”

“They’re farther south than we thought,” he tells her, “in the deeper of the two canyons. Makes it harder for the X-Wings to get a good dive angle on them.”

Jyn marks the coordinates of the convoy in the macrobinocular’s memory, commanding the little computer inside the device to generate a set of precise coordinates. “They can drop bombs from high altitude, can’t they?”

“Those convoys have been modified,” Cassian’s tone sounds slightly admonishing; Jyn figures this information was probably buried somewhere in the fifty page pre-briefing that she didn’t spend nearly as much time memorizing as he always does. “The first high-altitude drop will probably get at least one vehicle, but once they’re warned, they can bolt out of there and into one of the caves that riddle these hills, and we’ll lose the rest of the shipment.”

“Plus the Imps will change the supply route and we’ll have to start again,” Jyn mutters.

“That too.”

“So a low strike will let the X Wings get more accurate, faster bombs on target and crush all the missile trucks before they can get away,” Jyn sums up. The macros beep at her, coordinates generated, complete with trajectory calculations, timing the movement and direction of the convoy and continuously generating updated coordinates. She sets them down in the sand and rolls over, because her back hurts and seven hours is her limit for lying in one position.

Cassian’s hand lifts from her back in a quick, startled movement, but she catches his wrist before he can retract entirely, and tugs his hand firmly back down to her stomach. He clears his throat and gives her a pointed look, but Jyn’s tired and sweaty and her part in this operation is just about over, so she shrugs unrepentantly and keeps her grip on his wrist.

“Right,” he says at last, clearing his throat and looking back down into the valley. “But they are in the deeper canyon. The approach will be a lot more difficult.”

“But not impossible, right?” Jyn doesn’t really know much about piloting beyond what she needs to get most ships off the ground and into hyperspace. In-atmo maneuvers are beyond her skills, and her interest.

“No,” Cassian twists slowly in the sand, until he’s lying on his side now, facing her, his hand still on her stomach. Jyn can’t quite stop herself from smirking; his whole front is a smeared mess of greens, blues, reds, and oranges, the fine sand mixing with sweat to turn him into just as much a mess as her. His only advantage now is his still-combed, glossy hair.

She’s got an idea or two about that, but for now, they have at least one more job to do. “You or me?” She asks.

Cassian blinks, and she can practically see him snap himself back from somewhere inside his head, his ears turning faintly red (although to be fair, it is pretty hot out here). “What?”

Jyn reaches up and traces her fingertip around his ear, enjoying the deepening red color, and then taps his earpiece gently.

“Ah,” he says. “Right. I’ll do it.”

He rolls back onto his stomach, although he can’t quite hide the wince as he does. Jyn scowls, her good mood marred because this sniper post really has messed up his back. He’s going to be stiff and sore for days after they get out of here.

“Rogue Leader,” he says into his comm, and Jyn turns back to the desert because it’s easier to think about the convoy than the name that invokes a myriad of feelings that she can’t quite name and isn’t sure she wants to. “Rogue Leader, High Line, tally target.”

“Copy, High Line,” Antilles’ voice sounds considerably less irritable now, and Jyn can practically hear the whole of the air support division perk up overhead. “Standing by for coordinates.”

Jyn confirms the macrobinoculars’ calculated coordinates are still in synch with the convoy’s actual location, and then hands them over to Cassian. He shifts his rifle aside and lifts the lenses to read off the coordinates. “Rogue Leader, Anchor Point three-three-two, south bearing, ladder, six vehicles, azimuth ten. Twenty knots. Sending leading vehicle coordinates via secure net.”

He taps the button on the top of the macros that patches their calculations through the frequency up to the X Wings above them.

“Received,” Antilles replies. “Ingress in five. West approach. Confirm danger close?”

Jyn jerks her head up – they aren’t positioned close enough to the convoy to be in danger of friendly fire, not unless the squadron is way off in their calculations. Had the coordinates not gone through properly?

“Negative,” Cassian says, stressing the word. “High Line is not Danger Close.”

A beat on the comms, and then, “Standby.”

“If they bomb us,” Jyn tells Cassian flatly in the small silence that follows, “I’m going to haunt Antilles.”

Cassian’s jaw tightens; he shoots her a pained glance out of the corner of his eye, and she knows why. There’s no oppressive grey mountains, the sunlight reflects from the rainbow sand in a dazzling array, and she’s dripping with sweat, not rain, but the threat of Alliance bombs thundering down on her head brings up a whole host of intense memories that she would rather not deal with right now. Maybe not ever. Some things, in Jyn’s experience, were better off left in the past.

Cassian opens his mouth, then snaps it closed as the comm crackles to life in their ears. “High Line, Rogue Leader,” Antilles sounds relaxed again. “Correction: Ingress in three, North-west approach. Separation seven miles.”

Cassian lifts the macros, does a quick measurement between their sniper perch and the convoy trundling through the valley below. “Rogue Leader, High Line, concur, seven miles.”

“Copy. Don’t worry, High Line, we know which faces to crush.” Jyn can hear Antilles’ laughter over the comm before he clicks off.

“Copy,” Cassian replies dryly, and sighs.

“I stand by what I said,” Jyn tells him.

Cassian closes his eyes, folds his arms in the sand in front of his face, and rests his forehead against his arms. “If they bomb us,” he says, voice muffled by his jacket, “you won’t be able to haunt Antilles.”

“You know you don’t actually outrank me, Captain,” Jyn raises an eyebrow at him. “You don’t have the authority to tell me who I can or can’t haunt.”

“I would never dream of trying, Sergeant,” he replies, and his voice is light but his shoulders are tense. “I meant you wouldn’t be able to haunt him, because I will shoot him first.”

Jyn hesitates, and then she sits up. It’s not precisely protocol, but they know where the convoy is, and the Imps are unlikely to pick her out from seven miles away. Cassian doesn’t react to the sound of her clothes scraping on the sand, which tells her he agrees with that assessment. “When we get back,” she says quietly, “You need to see the physical therapist again.”

He grunts noncommittally.

“Cassian,” she says, and runs her hand up his spine to his neck, pressing her fingers tight against the muscles in his neck. He groans a little, burying his face a little harder in his arms to give her more access. “Go see the therapist.” She waits, but he doesn’t reply, so she bites her lip and pulls out the big guns. “Please.”

“Alright,” he says reluctantly, and she relaxes, because even if he hates it, he’ll keep his promise. “Alright, Jyn.”

A low rumble like distant thunder rolls through the colorful hills. Jyn looks up, but the blue sky is still clear, only the occasional puffy white cloud floating by.

“They’ll be moving low,” Cassian says, his face still pressed into his arms. Jyn will never know how he does that; her observational skills are finely honed by years of training and experience, but sometimes Cassian just…knows things. She wonders if that’s some kind of sniper thing, or a spy thing, or just a Cassian thing. “Watch the terrain.”

The rumble intensifies, until the sand beneath her knees begins to vibrate. She squints out into the desert hills, watching for the flash of orange and white.

Far down in the valley, the grey convoys suddenly picks up speed. Too late, Jyn thinks grimly.

“Rogue Squadron, cleared hot,” Antilles says over the comms. A high pitched whine cuts through the rumble of engines, the sound of high-powered laser weapons arming, and then the sky splits with the roar of multiple engines. From the far end of the valley, four spikey white shapes come screaming into her view, rocketing through the narrow confines of the Jewel Box canyon and bearing down on the convoy.

A thin trail of grey smoke spikes up from the convoy towards the X-Wings; one of the missile trucks must have had time to prep a surface-to-air weapon and fire it. Jyn gasps, although the sound is lost in the echoing roar of engines that seems to fill the world and drown every other noise out.

The thin stream of smoke sparks red, a sign that the missile has locked onto a target. Over the comms, she can just barely hear one of the pilots bark, “Rogue Two, spiked, defending east.”

Cassian’s arm loops around her waist, pulling her in tight against his side as he sits up and turns his eyes skyward.

One of the X-Wings breaks sharply away from the four-ship formation, headed directly into the unforgiving face of the striped hillside. The red spark of the missile banks to follow.

The X Wing turns again, a hairpin turn that nearly spins the craft through the air, light as a feather on a sharp breeze, and skims along the side of the incline. Behind it, the missile makes a much slower, wider turn, and slams into the hillside. A bright flash of red light, and then a cascade of rainbow sand pours down the hillside.

“Rogue Two, clean,” the pilot announces smugly over the comm.

“Rogue Leader, trigger down,” Antilles says, and if he says anything else, it’s lost over the whine of lasers. Bright green light flashes out from all four X-Wings, searing through the air towards the speeding convoy. The multiple thin beams seem to blur in Jyn’s sight, turning into one great beam that stabs down into the sand below, and –

Cassian’s arm tightens around her waist, and Jyn realizes she’s grabbed his wrist again, her nails digging into him through his jacket sleeve. She forces her fingers to flatten, because the last thing he needs is scratches down his forearm, but the green light is too bright to stand, and she turns her face away. To her surprise, she finds that Cassian is focused on her, seemingly oblivious to the green lasers or the red explosions that bloom out of the desert sand underneath them. His face is pale, shining with sweat, and a blue smudge of fine-grit sand mars his hair on the left side.

Jyn turns on her knees and loops her arms around his neck, pulling him in tight.

The whine of the lasers cuts out, although the engines still roar, making the canyon boom.

The comm crackles again, barely audible in her ear. “Rogue Leader, primary target hard kill. Secondary target hard kill.”

“Rogue Two, primary target hard kill. Secondary target soft kill.”

“Rogue Three, primary target hard kill.”

“Rogue Four, primary target hard kill.”

“Rogue Two, need a second pass at the secondary target?”

“Affirm, staggerback.”

Overhead, three of the X-Wings reform into a tight triangle formation, racing through the hills and vanishing over the far ridge. She can still hear them, though, and knowing Antilles, he won’t go far with one left behind. The fourth X-Wing makes a sharp one-eighty, and her lasers whine again as she primes for another attack.

“Rogue Two, trigger down.”

Another lance of green light. Jyn closes her eyes, props her chin on Cassian’s shoulder, and thinks about the shower that is waiting for them back on the outpost.

The whine cuts off. “Rogue Two, secondary target hard kill.”

“Copy kill,” Antilles sounds absurdly cheerful. “Rejoin on my wing.”

“Looks like Hobbie’s in my spot,” Rogue Two replies.

“Rogue Four, adjusting,” another voice says. The three X-Wings appear back over the ridge, and one of them slides backwards in the formation, turning the triangle into a lopsided diamond.

“Rogue Two, visual, joining.” The lone X-Wing does a fancy roll through the air that carries her up just over the sharp ridge of the canyon, and slots her neatly into the newly vacated spot on the lead craft’s right wing. Cassian snorts, which Jyn doesn’t hear but she can feel through his chest, pressed against hers, his exasperation with show off pilots clear even without words.

“Rogue Two, in position and lookin’ good,” the pilot drawls over the comm in her ear.

“High Line, Rogue Leader, we are clean of any contacts, bingo fuel, breaking away,” Antilles says. Jyn can imagine the lazy salute he’s probably flipping them, tapping his gloved fingers to his helmet and flicking them casually down at the two tiny dots lost in the colorful sand.

Jyn can feel Cassian’s beard scrape lightly against her cheek as he responds. “Rogue Leader, High Line, copy clean, you are cleared to depart. Good work.”

“See you at base,” Antilles responds, and then, “Rogue Flight, let’s send ‘em off in style. Twist right, on my mark. Three, two, one, _mark.”_

The four X-Wings scream by overhead, and just as they pass directly over Jyn and Cassian’s perch (so close that Jyn can feel the vibrations of the powerful engines in her bones), all four of them execute a tight roll, a perfectly synchronized dance that makes the sunlight flash off their wings as they send a spray of color up in their wake.

And then they pull their noses high and arc up into the blue sky, the roar fading to a rumble as they shrink, and then, finally, silence and empty blue sky.

Jyn leans back in Cassian’s arms. “He didn’t bomb us,” she says, “But you can still shoot him.”

Cassian huffs a quiet laugh and runs his hand through her hair. She has a feeling she now has a matching blue streak down the side of her head, the same place as his own. The idea makes her stupidly cheerful. “Come on,” he says, and pushes to his feet with less stiffness than she expects. “Let’s go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried to strike a balance between real comm brevity and clarity for readers unfamiliar with military aviation terminology. For reference: “angels” is a comm brevity term for “levels of altitude.” For example, if a craft is flying at ten thousand feet, then I will call “[Callsign], angels 10.” If I am directed by air control to move to eight thousand feet, my call will be “[Callsign], leaving angels 10 for 8.” When Wedge calls “check angels,” he’s telling his wingman to pay attention to his altitude. The rest, I think, is self-explanatory.
> 
> The maneuver Rogue Squadron salutes Jyn and Cassian with is called a [formation aileron roll.]()


	3. Victory Cake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This prompt is from @youareiron_andyouarestrong, who requested "Oh, that’s because I won.” + “what makes you think I can bake a cake?" I maybe twisted the first one a little.

Cassian opens his door, his clothes slightly rumpled, his face tired, but his eyes alert. Jyn feels a momentary flash of guilt, because she’s clearly just woken him up and if anyone in this rebellion needs sleep, it’s him. But the guilt is overwhelmed quickly enough by the urgency of her dilemma, and she vows internally that she’ll make it up to him, later.

“I need your help,” she tells him seriously. “And I need you to not ask any questions.” Down the hall, she hears voices growing louder, some babbling group of rebels moving their way. Jyn’s not interested in having this conversation in front of strangers, so she pushes past Cassian and into the room before he can answer. She feels more than hears his soft huff of laughter as she brushes against his chest, but he moves smoothly back to let her in and closes the door behind her.

“Alright,” he faces her, holding his hands out, palms up. “How can I help, Jyn?”

She opens her mouth, then shuts it as she registers his bare feet on the cold durasteel floor of Home One, his shirt tail hanging untucked at his waist and the top buttons undone far enough that his collarbone lies entirely exposed before her, and most of all, his hair is a soft mess falling around his ears. It’s the most…undone she’s seen him yet (time spent in the medwards does _not_ count). He drops his hands, makes a small, abortive move as if he’s started to fold them and then changed his mind, choosing to slip his thumbs into his pockets instead. His body language is otherwise relaxed, but that little nervous tick gives him away, and jolts Jyn out of her stunned silence.

“Cake,” she says abruptly.

Cassian blinks at her. “Cake.”

“I need one,” she clarifies.

Slowly, he dips his chin, watching her through his eyelashes. For some reason, the move draws her attention back to the vee of exposed skin on his chest, the dark hair she can see trailing down and disappearing under the material of his shirt. Jyn snaps her eyes back to his face and refuses to blush. She’s not embarrassed by a few centimeters of skin, for fuck’s sake. “You need a cake,” Cassian repeats, and that smile hovering at the corner of his mouth better be about the cake thing, and not because he caught her staring at his chest. “And I can’t ask any questions.”

“Can’t talk about it, either,” she adds, keeping her eyes firmly on his face.

He has really long eyelashes. What a stupid thing to find attractive. It just means he doesn’t get as much dirt in his eyes as everyone else. Good for him.

“Ah,” Cassian muses. “So it’s a secret cake.”

“No,” she snorts, reconsiders. “Yes.”

“Is it a specific cake we need to acquire?” Cassian leans back against the door behind him and crosses his ankles. With his thumbs still tucked in his pockets and his hair falling into his face, he looks unbearably relaxed. Jyn takes back her earlier thought, _this_ is the most undone she’s ever seen him. She looks at his shoulders with a critical eye, looking for the tense lines of pain. It’s only been about five months since Scarif, and he’s only just stopped walking with a limp.

Cassian rolls his shoulders back to press them against the door; he’s definitely smiling at her now, the corners of his mouth creasing upward.

It takes a moment for her brain to process his question. “No.”

“So…” Cassian lifts an eyebrow. “We’re…making one?”

“Yes.”

He’s definitely laughing at her, though he does her the courtesy of keeping it silent. “Are there…” he pauses, licks his lips, “any specifications?”

She’s about to remind him that he isn’t supposed to ask questions, except he casually tilts his head back and rests it against the door behind him, leaving the line of his throat exposed in front of her, and Jyn’s lungs suddenly feel curiously tight in her chest. It’s faintly reminiscent of how he was standing the first time she ever saw him, except that time he had been all casual indifference, as if he was watching the world from a very long distance and largely unimpressed with what he saw. Now his body is in roughly the same position, but the impression he gives now is anything but indifferent. His eyes are half closed, but intent on her, and the smile that keeps pulling at his mouth feels…private. Personal. A message just for her, if only she could figure out how to decode it.

She shakes herself. She doesn’t have time to decode messages. She’s on a mission. She has…needs.

“I need a cake,” she says, striving to sound firm and unaffected. She overshoots the mark a little, and it comes out a bit too intense, as if her life rides on the successful making of this cake. Well, that's not entirely wrong. Her life is safe as it ever is, but her honor is definitely on the line. More importantly, _Bodhi_ is on the line. In a way.

Cassian’s mouth curves on one side, his eyes crinkling with barely-suppressed humor.

Jyn snarls at him. “I lost a bet to Bodhi,” she surrenders. “And he wanted a cake, as his reward.”

Cassian swallows, which she knows only because his head is still tilted back and his throat visibly moves as he does it. “What was the bet?”

“No questions,” she says repressively, raising a warning finger.

“One question,” he shoots back, mimicking the motion.

She scowls, drops her hand (ignores that he mirrors her perfectly, letting his hand fall to his thigh this time rather than back in his pocket). She huffs at him, waiting for him to continue.

Cassian raises his eyebrows at her, though he keeps his head tilted back. “What makes you think that I can make a cake?”

Despite herself, Jyn’s eyes widen. “You _can’t?”_

Cassian laughs, or starts to, but quickly catches himself and turns it into a cough. “I’ve never, ah, never tried.”

Jyn holds up her finger again. “You laughed,” she says accusingly.

Cassian finally lifts his head to look at her straight on, and says in a very solemn voice, “I did not laugh. I coughed.”

“You _laughed._ I win. Get over it.” She holds up a second finger before he can protest more, “You cook all the time. You cooked _yesterday_. Those meat tube things.”

Cassian startles as if she’s pinched him, and then abruptly he slaps a hand over his face, his shoulders shaking. “Meat – meat tubes. You mean _taquitos?”_

Jyn waits until he lifts his head enough to peer at her over his fingers, and smiles grimly at him. “Laughing,” she says, no room for argument in her tone. “I win.”

Cassian closes his eyes, and at last concedes the point, dropping his hand and smiling. It’s not his usual reserved half-smile, nor the more genuine subtle smile tucked into the corners of his eyes and mouth – it’s his rare full-blown smile, the one where he lets his whole face relax into it, the one that flashes the dimple she hadn’t even known he had until a month after she met him, the one that makes her heart stutter a little in her chest and wild ideas fly through her head. It’s disarmed her before, caught her off guard, but this time, this time with his clothes in disarray and feet bare, this time when he already looks so comfortable and calm and _happy_ …

Force fucking help her, right now that smile is _devastating._

“I don’t know how to bake a cake,” Cassian recovers before she does, and crosses his arms comfortably across his chest, the smile dying down into something more survivable. “But I’m sure we can find a recipe on the holonet.”

“Holonet,” Jyn repeats dumbly. “Right.”

“Did Bodhi give you any specific things he wanted in this victory cake?”

“No,” Jyn clears her throat and folds her arms right back at him, valiantly ignoring that her elbow is only a centimeter from his when she does so. “But Chirrut said I should try a _basbousa._ ” She has to concentrate to say the word properly, mimicking the sibilant sounds Chirrut had made, softening the last syllables across her tongue. The momentary distraction gives her a small space to breathe and recover from Cassian’s…well, from Cassian, and Jyn relaxes into it with relief. Chirrut had told her at least a few of the main ingredients for that particular kind of Jedhan cake, so she’s reasonably sure she can find it on the holonet if she looks.

“Sounds delicious,” Cassian murmurs, sounding distracted.

Jyn feels a bit stupid now. Honestly, why didn’t she just use the holonet in the first place instead of barging into the middle of Cassian’s sleep cycle and demanding he solve a problem that didn’t involve him?

“You’re right, I can just look it up,” Jyn says, dropping her arms and looking over his shoulder at the door, and to her disgust realizes that her face feels warm. Shit. She’s blushing after all, because despite her best efforts it turns out she’s still a fool. “Sorry.” She steps forward, expecting him to slip to the side so she can slink out and leave him in peace. “To bother you. Go back to sleep.”

Cassian’s hands tighten on his arms, but otherwise he doesn’t move a centimeter. “No,” he says quietly.

Jyn hesitates, but he still doesn’t move, so she’s forced to look up at him. “No?”

“Yes, you can look it up,” he says calmly, the humor gone from his face and replaced with an intensity that Jyn isn’t certain she can interpret. “No, you haven’t ‘ _bothered_ ’ me. And no,” he pushes himself upright abruptly, and Jyn freezes like a mouse in a searchlight. “You don’t have to leave.”

He stops, licks his lips, and in a softer voice adds, “If you don’t want to. You don’t,” he unfolds his arms, leaves them hanging at his side. “You don’t have to leave.”

“Do you want me to?” Jyn demands, or tries to demand, but her voice has also failed her, turned wary and fragile without her consent.

Cassian takes a deep breath, lets it out, and Jyn does _not_ twitch when it brushes down her cheek and stirs the loose hair around her cheeks (but it’s a near thing). “No,” he says. “If that’s…if you are alright with that.”

Jyn considers that for a while, turning the thought over in her mind like a smooth stone, looking for cracks. Cassian wants her to stay, here, in his room, with him. He wants her to stay while he stands there within arm’s reach looking half dressed and vulnerable, something he’s made no attempt to correct. He wants her to stay while…

He wants her to stay.

“Yeah,” she says at last, “Yeah, I want to – to stay.”

If he’s trying to hide the relief in his eyes, she thinks, he’s doing a piss-poor job at it. “Good.”

“Good,” Jyn echoes again, because she’s an idiot and he’s standing right there, still looking unfairly attractive, and _ebajam_   _varbeca troac, if he smiles again I’m going to do something really stupid, like kiss him or something. And then I’m doomed._

“So,” Cassian says, the humor creeping back into the soft corners of his face. “Cake.”

Jyn nods. “ _Basbousa._ ”

“Jyn,” Cassian says, and he feels closer somehow, although she could swear neither of them moved. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For…” he makes a faint gesture with one hand, “asking for my help. Caring.” His eyes flick downward, and Jyn’s brain sparks a little because there is a very real chance that Cassian just looked at her lips. “For staying.”

She shrugs. “Yeah. That’s…yeah. Cake. Let’s…cake.”

“Cake,” he repeats, and then, Force help her, he smiles again. The real one. With the dimple and everything.

Well, shit.

She’s doomed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Basbousa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basbousa) is excellent, I highly recommend it.


	4. A Study In Stardust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This prompt is from both @ibonekoen and @mariganath, who both asked for “I am not going to say I am experienced in this, because I’m not. However, I have killed someone before, so that should count right?”
> 
> Did anyone else look at this and think “Sherlock Holmes/Star Wars fusion?" No? Just me? Okay.

 

“It is my sincerest hope,” Senator Mothma says as she glides serenely at Jyn Erso’s side, “that you do not take the guards as a sign of bad faith between us.”

Jyn eyes the rebels who march in slight disharmony around them with cold disinterest. The youngest, she estimates, is barely beyond an adolescent, and the eldest appears to have braved nearly all the years allotted him, holding forth now against the Empire with little more than a few aged teeth and spite. There is not a single one of the six so-called security guards that Jyn Erso could not utterly decimate with her bare hands, should she find herself in opposition of them.

The problem is in the number of high-powered blaster rifles. One, she can handle with ease. Two would strain her considerable fighting prowess. Three is chancy. Six is altogether too many, no matter the age of the fingers on the triggers. Should she attempt to escape her current predicament, she will find herself with at least one more hole in the head than is typically considered ideal.

So Jyn sets her jaw and her resolve, and follows the Senator through the bustling military base wherein she has so abruptly found herself. Survival is a tricky thing, on occasion calling for a more temperate behavior than rage at her capture or desire for freedom (freedom from the Alliance, freedom from the Empire, freedom from _fear_ ) would allow. Jyn Erso has been at the study of both Rage and Desire for many years, but she is first and foremost an ardent scholar of Survival. She will behave. For now.

“I feel it is my duty to inform you of the expectation regarding the villain whom we have set you to task,” Mothma continues as they turn out of the chaotic hangar of the main base and into the quieter, and unfortunately more _confining_ corridors of the structure.

“Your expectations are clear,” Jyn cuts in, because she has already endured a long and loathsome hour in the dim command center of the Alliance, who regard themselves as the Bright Hope of the Galaxy, and yet cannot seem to muster the wherewithal to locate one man. A man who, as far as Jyn has any understanding, is not even particularly attempting to hide. Her hour in the beating heart of the Alliance has gifted her with little insight into why they struggle with such a seemingly mundane task, although it has left her with the lingering taste of fear bubbling like acid on her tongue, and a singular dislike of the red-headed General who tossed the torn and bloodied tatters of her life into her lap as if they were so much garbage. “You expect that I shall find Orsen Krennic for you, and provide a means for your trained killer to rid you of that complication to your plans for open warfare with the Empire.”

It is an unkind way of summarizing her bargain with the people who have dragged her from an Imperial prison and stuffed her back into a uniform that she long ago shed, willingly or not. But the statement bears a great deal of uncomfortable truth, and the Senator does not flinch but her countenance takes on a distinct air of sorrow, and discomfort. The elderly guard squints at Jyn, and lifts his lip in a snarl that reveals one greyish tooth.

“Should you find Commander Krennic,” Mothma says at last, and Jyn valiantly swallows the bile that name invokes in the back of her throat, “there is a chance that we will have the means to avoid open warfare altogether.”

This feels so far from the realm of possibility that Jyn does not bother to respond. They continue in silence for several more minutes, in which Jyn devotes her attention and acuity to mapping the base. Wherever they are going, it appears to be on the far outer edge of the facility, near what she believes to be a secondary landing site. Covert spacecraft, Jyn guesses, the kind whose comings and goings the Alliance does not want all of their personnel to remark upon.

Wonderful. Not content with Jyn’s agreement to find Orsen Krennic in exchange for the means of a fresh start within the galaxy (an identity solid enough to allow her to pass as a real citizen within the Empire and not merely exist in the fringes of society), the Senator has apparently decided to assign her a warden of some kind. A warden that prefers – or even needs – to enter and depart the base unnoticed and unknown.

At last they come to a halt near the edge of the small landing platform, on which sit three spacecraft of varying age, type, and level of repair. A decrepit Corellian light freighter with a motley collection of non-standard modifications looms the largest of the arrayed craft. An old but pristine Starhopper gleams in the center of the pad, polished to an almost ridiculous degree. In the far distant corner, an unremarkable U-Wing in a reasonable state of repair sits, the large cargo door open but no sentient life visible nearby.

The Senator regards the landing pad for a moment, and if she looks at anything in particular, she is adept enough at obscuring the movement of her eyes that Jyn cannot track them. The moment drags out, one of the younger guards coughs discretely into their fist, and finally Jyn reaches the end of her patience. “Am I to pick my own means of transportation, then?” She jerks a thumb at the display before her. “Or are we merely here to admire the day?”

Secretly, deep down in her restless soul, she feels a little flutter of weak hope. If these Alliance fools really intend to just give her a ship without the encumbrance of a warden to cuff her wrists and bare a blaster at her head, this whole situation might turn around in her favor after all.

“And if you were,” a new voice says from the shadows behind her, “Which would you choose?”

Jyn startles and whirls, as do at least four of the guards. The other two, the elder and the youth, are on Mothma’s other side and thus out of Jyn’s immediate sightline. She dismisses them as immaterial anyway, all her attention focused on the tall, lean man who stalks slowly out of the alcove where he has been lurking this whole time. There are no doors in that particular nook of the landing pad, and the angled walls of the temple make it difficult to see into the sharp corner. He must have stationed himself there before they came out of the corridors, patiently awaiting their arrival.

Her brief hope withers and dies. The man is looking at her with such _sharp_ intent, his dark eyes tracking from her limp, unwashed hair to the still-raw shackle wounds on her wrists to the Wobani mud not yet dry on her trouser cuffs. His interest cannot be merely academic; this, then, is her warden. The Alliance may be fools to stand so boldly against the might of the Empire, but they are not, she grants, so foolish after all as to let her fly off alone.

“You would choose the U-Wing,” the stranger says abruptly, and his expression turns instantly to dismissive disinterest. “Senator,” he says over Jyn’s head, “I have left you the Kafrene file for future perusal. My apologies, but the connection to Gerrera’s Partisans is no longer,” he hesitates, a flicker of something in his eyes that dies before she can name it, “available,” he finishes firmly, and turns away.

“My thanks, Captain,” the Senator smiles, gracious and empty. “I shall will find it very enlightening.”

“I’m certain you will,” he replies in a distracted tone that heavily implies he is not.

“Then I shall leave you to your task, Captain. Miss Erso.” Senator Mothma turns lightly and breezes from the landing pad, the entourage of guards making a game effort at marching in step around her. The elder guard gives Jyn one last squint of his beady eye, and then they are gone inside the temple, and Jyn finds herself alone with the stranger.

He regards her in further silence, his face unsettlingly blank, his body as still as if he were one of the old and worn statues dotting the temple’s façade. Only his dark hair, longer than typical of military personnel and suspiciously glossy for someone living on the scant resources of the Alliance, flutters in the light breeze. His beard, too, is long for a soldier, though just as neatly groomed as the rest of him. Considering his appearance, carefully cultivated to avoid any suggestion of regular military despite the rank badge on his chest, and the manner in which he had materialized out of the shadows, Jyn determines that he can only be of one profession.

The Alliance has shackled her to a spy. Or an assassin. Most likely, he is both.

Jyn narrows her eyes and raises her chin, painfully aware of the blaster clipped into his thigh holster, of the small knife up his right sleeve and the large one in his left boot, and of her own complete lack of any weapon at all. Nothing in his movements or body language telegraph any weakness of physical form, and his stillness defies her attempts to identify his preferred fighting methods. Her last hope had been a quick attack on her warden followed by a quicker escape, but confronted now with such dangerously blank slate, she finds that she has no idea what the outcome of that venture might be.

The silence stretches on; whatever else he might be, the man clearly is the master of patience. Jyn, to her occasional shame, is nothing of the kind. “I would have chosen the Starhopper,” she tells him flatly, folding her arms and bracing her feet.

“No, Lieutenant,” he answers immediately, with the same lack of inflection. “You would not.”

Jyn bites her lip, because no one has called her Lieutenant since Saw left her behind as an adolescent. Few called her by that rank even when she owned it, and a small voice in her head wonders that the Alliance even knows _that_ piece of information at all. “What makes you so certain?”

“Your hair is styled in a typical Mid Rim fashion,” he says immediately. “Your clothes are sturdy but all second hand, and clearly chosen for their slightly off-matching color. You wear gloves to cover the scars on your hands but do not bother to hide your face, you have the practiced scan of a soldier on patrol wherever you walk, and yet you do not instinctively fall in step with the marching soldiers around you. Nor,” he says quickly when Jyn opens her mouth to cut at the weakness of his argument, “do you deliberately march exactly out of step with them, which a disgraced or disillusioned soldier might do as a form of protest. You simply are not accustomed to caring about the steps of others at all. A fighter with military experience, yes, but a soldier, no. More importantly, a fighter who wishes to appear, in every way, like the ordinary citizen she most certainly is not.”

“And all this,” she snarls, angry at the way he so casually looks her up and down and dissects her out loud as if he has the _right_ , “tells you that I would prefer one ship to another?”

“You don’t like to stand out,” he says coolly, her bitter words washing over him without apparent notice. “Neither for good nor ill. You would not choose the Starhopper because it is too flashy, too remarkable both for it’s clean appearance and it’s status as an antique model. And you would not choose the freighter because it is…” he glances to the side, for the first time his mouth twisting into a mild grimace, his nose wrinkling slightly with distaste, “noticeable.”

“It looks like a trash heap rebirthed as a modern art exhibit,” Jyn corrects.

He blinks, his attention returning to her, and for the barest moment his eyes crinkle upward and his mouth shows the suggestion of humor in it’s shape, and then the brief flash of humanity dies, his face locking back down into the shuttered emptiness of the warden. The spy. The assassin.

“The U-Wing is completely unremarkable,” he says. “You prefer it above the others.”

Jyn steps close, her eyes narrow and her fists clenched. She gives him only a heartbeat to access her stance, the way in which she braces one foot and twists on the other, the slight angle of her arms and the tilt of her body in relation to his, and then she surges forward with her fist raised.

He drops immediately, instinctively, into a sideways stance, protecting his left side and raising his arms in a distinctive defensive pattern taught most frequently in the Terrable sector. There is a Temple there, if she recalls correctly, where the monks practice a peculiar form of physical combat.

Jyn drops her attack and steps back, just out of his longer reach, and allows herself a single smirk. “Did you enjoy your stay in Jedha, Captain? Your defensive form is very good, although I fear your reaction time is not as honed as it really ought to be,” she lifts one eyebrow sardonically. “For a spy.”

He straightens, and to her internal delight, the edges of his cold expression fracture again, surprise and humor and something like respect peering through the thin splinters before he tucks them away again and smooths his face back into an unreadable mask. “I regret that I have not had enough opportunity to practice, of late.”

Jyn shrugs. “Pity.”

He regards her a moment longer, and then the captain turns his back to her and begins to cross the landing pad. Jyn hesitates the barest of moments, compelled by a petty urge to stand her ground and force him to return and retrieve her. In the end, though hot Rage and aching Desire scream in her chest, experienced Survival douses them with the cold water of practicality. There is no point in pettiness if it will gain her nothing but the indignity of being forced along like a petulant child by a man so arrogant as to presume to know her mind.

Even if he does have very compelling dark eyes.

It only takes her a few quick steps to catch up to him, and to her pleasant surprise she finds that she doesn’t have to trot to keep up with him afterwards, her footsteps falling in a natural rhythm with his own despite the difference in their stature.

“You will need a warmer jacket,” he tells her before she can dwell on the singular oddity of their matching strides. “It is winter in Jedha.”

She scowls, and forces herself to speak, to engage, because the sooner she fulfills her obligation to the Alliance, the sooner she can be free of this, of all of it. Or, possibly, the sooner she finds herself in a fight to the death with the assassin who no longer has a use for her. But one problem at a time. “I am not a tracker,” she says bluntly, because it is important to set certain clear boundaries and reasonable expectations. “I can fight, and I can slice, and should we need the occasional pocket picked, I can handle that too. But if you are hoping I will pop out of hyperspace and immediately scent that bastard’s foul stench like a bloodhound, you are mistaken.”

The spy clears his throat, a sound that she is almost sure is meant to cover an aborted laugh. “I am not, ah, in need of a bloodhound. Nor do I expect you to track Krennic alone. That will be my primary responsibility.”

Jyn resists the urge to ask _is it not to keep me in line, then? Or is my life only secondary to your objectives?_ Rage may enjoy throwing his place as her warden in his face, but Survivability thinks provoking a heavily armed man with combat skills and free reign to kill her without fear of consequence would be the very height of stupidity. Instead, she moderates her tone and says cautiously, “I do have some combat experience, should the need arise.”

“Yes,” he nods. “I know.”

“Jedha,” she tries again, searching for the opening she needs to get him talking, because when he falls silent he becomes as remote and unreadable as the stars. “You think to find Krennic there?”

“No,” he shakes his head and stops beside a small pile of bags sitting on the edge of the landing pad. “It’s merely the last place we have any confirmed activity from him. We will speak to those most likely to have the fullest knowledge of Imperial comings and goings in the sector, if we can manage it. I have contacts in the Holy City, contacts willing to lead me to an old friend of yours.” He slings one of the bags over his shoulder, picks up a blue parka folded neatly on top of another, and then hands her the last bag. “Saw Gerrera,” he answers her questioning expression, and Jyn feels her own face tighten.

“Not a friend,” she says, keeping a hard hold on her composure, ignoring the sudden pounding in her chest and the surge of hate-love-grief-longing-rage that sweeps through her until it recedes safely again back down into the dark recesses of her mind.

“No,” he agrees, watching her with the same sharp stare of before. “Clearly the situation is more complex than that.”

“Truly you have a dizzying power of observation,” she snipes.

“It’s both a gift and a curse,” he replies blandly, taking no damage from her intended blow. “As, I think, you well know.”

She glowers at him, because Rage, at least, is safe enough to wear. He drops the bag into her hand and steps back. “Come, Jyn Erso,” he orders, or invites, his tone ambiguous enough that for a moment she truly cannot tell. “Come with me to Jedha. I have a suspicion we will both find something of value to us there.”

The last strikes her as amazingly suspicious, though she can’t say why. At the same time, the faint gleam of wry humor has filtered back into his face, tucked unobtrusively but undeniably in the corners of his mouth and the dark shadows of his eyes.

Jyn has committed acts of far greater stupidity for far less compelling reasons. And if she allows herself to think on it, the satisfaction of killing Orsen Krennic, the man who murdered her parents and sent her life into a tailspin of chaos and pain, is very, very compelling indeed. Even if Saw is involved. Especially if Saw is involved.

The Alliance captain lifts his hand, slowly, as if he is not entirely sure whether he offers it to a woman or a rancor, but he offers it nonetheless. “Will you, Jyn Erso?”

Jyn lifts her own hand, hesitates. “It is not my habit,” she informs him carefully, “to run about the galaxy with strange men.”

A lie, and a blatant one at that, but it fans the humor in his face a little brighter, and he merely raises an eyebrow rather than call her on her deceit. “Cassian Andor,” he tells her, hand still outstretched between them.

“Well then, Captain Cassian Andor.” Jyn slings the bag over her own shoulder and steps a little closer, crossing within his arm’s reach for the first time, though she ignores his outstretched hand. “If we are going to Jedha, we will require a ship. Which of these is yours?”

He drops his hand, but his mouth curves into a half smile that turns his cold, narrow features into something significantly warmer, and startlingly handsome.

Not that she’s looking.

He steps to the side and gestures down the length of the landing pad, to the far corner. Jyn follows the gesture, and nearly smiles herself when she sees what he is indicating.

“The U-Wing,” she says, and wonders at the hint of laughter lurking in her tone.

Cassian Andor’s smile grows, not by much, but just enough for an observant person to note the change. “The U-Wing,” he agrees, and tilts his head down as if he is nodding with respect, or perhaps, simply closing the distance between them. “As, I think, you already know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So my initial thought was "Jyn as Watson, Cassian as Holmes," but then I thought about it some more, and realized that they are both very intelligent, both trained by their experiences to be extremely observant, and anyway the SW galaxy is massive, there are countless things to know, so why not make them both a bit Holmes-ian and just have them specialize in different areas? Also in this world, both Jyn's parents are dead and Cassian already knows the Guardians for reasons.


	5. an honest heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for @the-answer-is-dawn, who prompted "The worn out beat of a tired heart."

“The Houses of Ankus will of course be proud to stand with the Alliance,” their Cragmoloid Guide grunts at them as he shuffles down the stone corridors. “Once we have concluded our investigation.” The bleached patterns on his sweeping grey leather coat seem to flow up into the black tattoos on his wrinkled, gray skin and down the short, sharp tusks that jut from his wide face. The only color on his whole body is the startling red of his beady eyes as he turns to glance back at the Humans following in his wake. Personally, Jyn thinks the color scheme of their new potential ally is a little ominous. But considering that most of the powerful but largely pacifist Cragmoloids on Ankus are currently slaves for the Empire that has recently decided to squat on their homeworld…well. Cassian says they are primed to join the Alliance and have people positioned in strategically useful places to disrupt a lot of Imperial supply lines. That’s worth overlooking a few poor color choices.

The word choice is a little less easy to ignore, however. At Jyn’s side, Cassian’s face is almost rigid with his carefully blank mask. She doesn’t really know what the Guide sees in Cassian’s expression, but to her, it’s pretty obvious her partner is trying not to grit his teeth. This is the fourth time in the single hour they’ve been on planet that the Cragmoloid has openly spoken the word “Alliance.” He’s also said “rebels,” “rebellion,” and “overthrow the Empire” sporadically throughout his long-winded speeches. Every time he says something completely, suicidally stupid like this, Cassian’s eyes get a little more distant, and his fingers twitch slightly. Three, Jyn decides, eyeing his hands as the Guide shuffles through a large, white arch and down a new corridor. Cassian will allow him to put them all at risk three more times before his sense of self-preservation overrides his mission objective to play nice with the locals in order to recruit them to the Cause.

Ahead of them, the Guide pauses in front of an intricately carved white door. The thick white walls around them have been carved to replicate swirling currents and cresting waves, patterns that are lost in the overwhelming whiteness of the salt that covers this part of the planet. The door, however, resembles a giant piece of lace, a pale yellow light shining through the latticework from the room inside. The whole place reminds her vaguely of Jedha – before the Empire blew it up, of course. Across from the door, a viewport that runs from floor to ceiling gives them a breathtaking view of the outside – strangely carved pillars of salt dot the otherwise flat terrain outside like a forest of pure white trees. To Jyn’s unfamiliar eyes, it looks like a snowscape full of frozen alien images, though logically she knows this is a temperate climate in the middle of summer.

“Come, friends from the Alliance,” the Cragmoloid calls with a touch of grandeur in his tone, folding his thick grey fingers together and nodding gravely at the lattice-worked door. Cassian’s fingers twitch. “The Speakers will see you.”

Cassian stays where he is in the corridor, so Jyn does too, although she isn’t sure what they are waiting for. The Guide stares at them with his beady red eyes, as if he is also waiting for something. Cassian doesn’t flinch. Jyn lets her hand drift to her truncheon at her hip, just in case. Slowly, the Cragmoloid’s long, trunk-like nose rises up as if he is…looking at them with his nostrils, okay, that’s a new one, and then he bows his head and stays like that, eyes closed.

“Our thanks,” Cassian says, and strides forward towards the door as if nothing unusual has just happened. Belatedly, Jyn recalls some mention in the briefing for this recruiting mission about ranking protocols. Something about the Cragmoloids having a very ingrained hierarchy and looking down on people who didn’t conform to it, or whatever. She figures the thing where the Guide didn’t bow to them was probably some kind of test, and Cassian just passed it. Don’t let a Cragmoloid refuse to give you respect if it’s owed? She thinks that’s what the breifing said. At the time, she’d just assumed that was a kind of free pass to accept fights, if any of the sturdy little aliens chose to pick one.

Cassian had coughed into his fist when she told him that, and she could have sworn he was smiling right before he wiped his face blank and asked her calmly to refrain from beating up the people they were trying to recruit. The Cragmoloid concept of respect is tied somehow into their concept of honesty, and they will have to be careful while they negotiate. The whole thing sounds like nonsense to Jyn, but this mission isn’t about recruiting _her_ , is it?

And anyway, Jyn’s job isn’t to impress the pachyderms’ Council or House Congress or whatever they call themselves here. Her job is to keep Cassian alive while _he_ impresses them. So Jyn ignores the bowing Cragmoloid and follows close on Cassian’s heels as he walks through the lattice door.

Inside the fancy door is a small room of some kind, filled with soft cushions, a charging station for datapads, and a low table with a holoprojector playing some popular vid. Across the small space is another door embedded in the wall, this one made of stark durasteel, no fancy carvings or holes at all. The faint scent of salt and citrus floats through the space.

Jyn nudges a huge blue cushion covered in bleached white patterns suspiciously. Where are the Cragmoloid leaders?

“Waiting room,” Cassian says, and Jyn catches him pressing his fist to his mouth again as he watches her prod at the cushion. “I think they expect you to stay here.”

She stares at him, and he raises his hands.

“I’m the one listed as the Speaker for the,” he pauses, grimaces, “for the Alliance.”

Jyn narrows her eyes. “No.”

“I expect it will be a very boring negotiation,” he says cautiously. “You might use the chance to get some rest.”

“No.”

His eyes flick to her right hand, and Jyn swallows and fights the urge to curl that hand into a fist around the plain white bandage on her knuckles. Last night had been…difficult. The Man in White had haunted her dreams, bright green light following in his wake as she ran and ran and – and she had snapped awake when Cassian called her name from the door. Unfortunately, she had also lashed out with her right hand, and planted her fist straight into the metal locker by her bunk.

The only thing more vicious than her curses as she nursed the split knuckles had been the curse Cassian had muttered under his breath when she confessed the details of the nightmare to him. Mercifully, he hadn’t spoken any more about it after her hand was wrapped, but now she could see the backlash of her poorly timed bad night in his eyes as he glanced from the waiting room to her.

Well, he was just going to have to get over it, because there was no way Jyn was sitting around on some poofy pillow while he went into who-knew-what kind of sealed room with a bunch of total strangers.

Jyn crosses her arms and plants her feet, glaring at him. _“No.”_

Cassian sighs, nods.

The metal door swings open as they approach, and Cassian straightens his shoulders and strides in, projecting confidence as he goes. Jyn prowls in at his heels.

And then freezes.

She has a split second to take in the room – it’s almost a mirror of the waiting room outside, although there is no holoprojector, no datapads, and there are large screens on all the walls.

Cassian whirls on his heels and throws his arm around her shoulders, lunging for the door.

It clangs shut, trapping them inside.

Cassian’s breath catches, his chest tense against hers. He’s pressed close, so close she can feel his heart pounding against her ribs. It’s the feel of his heart that finally triggers her own adrenaline a second after his, her throat tightening and her muscles tensing. The door is shut behind them. There’s no one here. _Trap_. It’s a trap!

_Fuck._

Cassian’s momentum throws them both up against the hard metal of the door, her back slamming into it, his weight hard against her. It knocks the wind from her lungs, but there’s no time to wail about it; Jyn thrusts out her arms and shoves him off, staggering around and drawing her blaster as she wheezes. She stands between Cassian and the rest of the room, because this was a trap meant for him, which means the threat probably comes from the opposite direction.

Cassian’s hands grab her shoulders as if he means to pull her back against him, but stops before he exerts any pressure.

Jyn gulps in air to her aching lungs, raises her blaster, and waits for something to shoot.

A second later, Cassian yanks his own blaster up and steps to her side; she snarls at him but he doesn’t fall back behind her.

And then…

And then nothing.

Seconds tick by, Jyn’s breathing levels out again, but nothing happens. The room is just an empty room, some cushions on the floor, a low table to the side, and the large, blank screens on the walls.

“Okay,” Cassian says at last, and lowers his blaster. “Let’s check the room.”

Jyn lets her blaster point at the floor, too – and the screens flicker to life.

Seven Cragmoloids are staring at them through the screens, ringing the room. They are uniformly grey, with deep wrinkles and dark grey wisps of hair. One of them has a broken tusk, one is blind, two are female, and all of them are ancient, worn into odd lumps and shapes by the same forces that carve their salt pillars outside.

“Sweet winds to you,” Broken Tusk grates. “I am Speaker for House Tlak. We apologize for the lack of forewarning, but time is short, and we must commence our investigation into the possibilities of the Alliance before the Empire discovers your presence.”

“You are safe here,” another reassures them, waving his stubby grey fingers at them in what he probably thinks is a soothing gesture. “I am Speaker for House Blesh, and I give you my vow that no outside force shall harm you under our care.”

Cassian steps forward, his blaster held down at his side in one hand. Jyn keeps her own wrapped tight around the stock, ready to raise and fire on a moment’s notice. “I am Tarash Dymos, a friend from the Rebel Alliance. I do not know what offense we have committed, Honored Speakers of the Houses of Ankus,” he says formally, and from the way several pairs of red eyes widen, his knowledge of their titles has surprised them. “But we are peaceful ambassadors, come to your planet by invitation to offer our hand in friendship.”

“Lies,” a wizened old Cragmoloid bellows, his long nose twitching angrily on his face. “Already he lies! Tarash Dymos does not exist; we already know he wears another’s name. This one is known as Andor, we learned this before he came. Deceiver! The Alliance has sent us a deceiver!”

“Please, Speaker Fyorn,” Broken Tusk raises his gravely voice. “We must complete a full investigation before we draw conclusions.”

“We are ambassadors,” Cassian begins again, and if he’s shaken to hear his real name announced by a pack of Cragmoloids when hardly anyone within the Alliance itself actually knows it, he doesn’t show it. “And we mean you no harm – “

“Yes, yes,” one of the female Cragmoloids grumbles in a rattling bass voice, tapping a white carved staff against something off-screen and scowling. “So you’ve claimed. And we will believe you, once we have concluded the investigation.”

“I understood the investigation involved a series of detailed questions which I would answer for you,” Cassian’s voice is quickly dropping from formal to icy. “I also understood that my partner would not be involved in the process.”

“Your assistant was not meant to follow you into the interrogation chamber,” a Speaker says, peering at them through a cut glass monocle of some kind. His tusks have both been capped with jagged durasteel blades, and for a moment Jyn allows herself to fantasize about breaking one off and stabbing him with it. “If you request it, we will allow her to exit immediately.”

“Although be warned, Speaker for the Alliance, that you may not leave until you face the investigation. Shall we open the door?”

“That would be ideal,” Cassian begins. “Please allow my partner to - ”

“No,” Jyn snaps.

Cassian doesn’t turn around, but his jaw flexes and his shoulders manage to tense even further than they already are.

“We will abide by your decision, although we strongly recommend you leave, Assistant to the Speaker,” Broken Tusk swings his long nose back and forth, a gesture that seems strangely mournful. Jyn doesn’t bother to reply.

“Enough chatter,” the female booms, her white cane rapping again. “Begin the investigation. I want to know what he’s made of.”

“Deceiver,” the wizened arsehole mutters. “Even the light may not be enough to make that one honest.” Something about the way he says “the light” bothers Jyn; somehow she doesn’t think he means the lights in the room.

“If we are to be _honest_ with one another,” Cassian says, and his voice is definitely cold now, and getting colder by the second. “Then perhaps you can explain what exactly you mean by “investigation.””

“Do you know how the Empire came to command our world, Speaker Alliance?” Broken Tusk shakes his broad head. “They lied. For many long generations, our people have taught honesty in all things, we have held truth sacred above all other virtues. So when the Humans with their robes and their smiles and their shining swords came to us and spoke words that so well matched our own beliefs, our own truths, we believed them.

“And then,” his voice turns dour and pained, “we discovered their treachery. Now our people labor as _slaves_ , now our sacred pillars are toppled. And we have, at last, learned suspicion.”

“If you want us to join the Alliance,” the female says in a much less dramatic voice, “you must show us what kind of being you truly are.”

Prickles run up Jyn’s spine, an uneasy feeling twisting through her guts. Cassian seems to feel the same, because he takes a small half step back, inching his way closer to Jyn with his hand tightening around his blaster stock. “I am an ambassador from the Alliance,” he says. “I am not representative of every member within it.”

“They have sent you as Speaker,” Broken Tusk reprimands him. “You are the representative they have chosen, and so you will bear the responsibility for them. That is what Speakers are _for_ , young man.”

Jyn shoots a quick glance over her shoulder at the door. No latch in here; this room isn’t meant to be opened from the inside. Damn. Maybe Cassian still has that grenade in his right boot…except even on the smallest blast radius, it would still kill them both, in a room this small.

There has to be a way out.

“What,” Cassian takes a slow step forward, swallows. “What exactly does this investigation entail?”

She stares at the back of his head, because he has _got to be kidding_.

“You will submit to the light,” the old geezer growls.

“On the table, Speaker Alliance,” Broken Tusk nods to the side, and the low table rumbles for a minute, and then a secret compartment built into the top pops open. Inside the shallow depression, she can see a…

Oh fuck.

No.

_No._

“A syringe,” Cassian says flatly. “You want me to drug myself.”

“The Light will remove all your pretenses,” Broken Tusk nods. “Your shields, your inhibitions, all of your lies, gone. It will not last, of course; we have calibrated the formula to a Human of your age and body mass. You will be without inhibition for six hours, after which you will simply,” he made an odd growling noise that Jyn couldn’t begin to interpret, “wake up.”

“And we will know what kind of creature you are, Speaker Alliance,” the old woman added.

Cassian rocked back on his heels.

“And when this investigation is concluded,” he says slowly, and this has got to be a ploy for time, he must just be dragging out the conversation so Jyn can maybe get the door open or find a weakness in the wall panels – _come on, Jyn,_ _think!_ But she can’t get a door open without a lock (or a grenade), and the walls in this place look sturdy as any prison cell she’s ever been in.

“When the investigation is concluded,” Cassian is saying over the buzz of Jyn’s brain, “if you judge me worthy, you will join the Alliance?”

“If we deem that you will not turn on our people,” Broken Tusk raises his nose and bares his tusks at them in what might be either a friendly smile or a snarling challenge, “then we will give you soldiers, access to a mineral-rich mine the Imperials do not know exists, weapons we have stolen from their stocks over the last two years, and four heavy cruisers hidden around our moon.”

Jyn’s mouth drops open, and then she snaps it shut again. The Cragmoloids have all _that,_ and they haven’t tried to rebel themselves?

Fast on the heels of that thought is, _it’s still not worth it_.

And then, _he’ll do it anyway_.

“I am not at liberty to allow myself to be drugged with a truth serum,” Cassian says, and a spark of hope flares back in Jyn’s chest. “There is information I cannot share with you. Too many lives are at stake.”

All seven Cragmoloids break into a cacophony of hacking coughs. It takes Jyn a moment to realize that they are…laughing.

“We have no interest in Alliance _secrets,_ ” one of them barks, her trunk twisting into a complicated knot and then relaxing again. “We only wish to know your _self._ ”

“The Light does not induce confessions of words,” Broken Tusk assures him. “What would be the use of that? Words can still be untrue, even when the speaker believes them. The Light will in fact _suppress_ your ability to speak, to prevent lies. We have no use for the locations of your battleships or the codes you use to communicate, Speaker Alliance. We only need to know the manner of people who stand at our door with trunks – er, _hands_ outstretched. If you are cruel or selfish, if you are weak and frightened - these things will inform our decision to stand with you, or against you.”

_“Against_ us?” Jyn bursts out, startled into speaking. “You mean to work with the Empire?”

“If we cannot count on you to fight for our freedom,” Broken Tusk’s nose swings from side to side again, a move she is beginning to equate with a shrug. “Then perhaps we can bargain with the Empire for something close enough to it.”

The room fills with silence, and Jyn contemplates screaming loudly to shatter it. It wouldn’t help, of course, but at least they’d know, on no uncertain terms, exactly what _she_ thought about this utter clusterfuck of an ‘investigation.’

“Why a locked room?” Cassian takes a halting step towards the table, and Jyn’s stomach sinks. “You do not have access to my medical file. I could have an allergic reaction, and my death would cause complications with the Alliance that you cannot afford. Why not a medical ward, with doctors on standby?”

For the first time, the Cragmoloids appear uneasy, shifting their weight, glancing off the screens to the sides, and the wizened one with the sharpened tusks flaps his big ears unhappily.

“We have done this investigation many times,” Broken Tusk admits at last. “Humans tend to react…poorly.”

Cassian’s voice turns flat. “Elaborate, please.”

“Your species often becomes violent under the influence of The Light,” the old female says bluntly. “The first Human we investigated was in a medward. He broke several pieces of valuable equipment and a couple of our doctors’ bones.”

“Another of your kind clawed her own face bloody,” one of the other Speakers says, his ears flapping gently in distress. “Hideous sight, screams were awful.”

“It’s for the best we isolate you,” Broken Tusk tells them. “For your sake, and ours.”

“We have a medical staff on standby,” one volunteers cheerfully. “For when it’s over. We even have a little bacta.”

Cassian turns on his heel, putting his back squarely to the screens, and looks Jyn dead in the eye.

“Go outside,” he says, no room for argument in his tone. His eyes glitter dangerously, and Jyn knows that if she fights him on this, he will find some way to maneuver her out. He can’t physically force her out, so he’ll probably try some kind of emotional lever. Guilt, or anger, he’ll find whatever button he knows is most vulnerable to get her to leave him alone in this prison cell with a drug that will render him utterly helpless. For the Alliance. For the war.

He’ll hate himself for doing it, after, but he’ll do it all the same.

Jyn drops her eyes from his intense stare and presses her lips together.

“We will open the door, if that is your request,” Broken Tusk says again. “But if you walk out with her, Speaker Alliance, we will know your truth, and we will not join our forces with cowards.”

“Please open the door so that my partner can wait outside,” Cassian says, and holds his blaster out to her. “Take this. Better not to have it in my reach.”

Jyn takes the blaster, and slowly tucks both her own and his in her holster belt. She keeps her eyes on the floor, because she can’t look up and meet his gaze right now, doesn’t dare let him see what she’s thinking. But she holds out her empty hand, and without speaking he understands. A clink, another, and then two blades drop into her palm. She doesn’t have enough slots for his blades alongside her own, so she slips off her holster and her truncheon harness, and carefully bundles the blades up in the straps. The door slides open behind her.

“Thank you,” he says quietly.

Jyn turns on her heel, and throws the bundle of their weapons through it. They land with a clatter on one of the cushions, and Jyn reaches around the door frame and slaps the latch on the wall. She jerks her arm back through the door as it snaps shut again, just barely avoiding getting her hand slammed in the metal. The whole thing takes less than two beats of her heart.

She turns back around and lifts her head to meet Cassian’s, her face stony.

“What are you –“ Cassian lunges towards her, grabs her by the shoulders, his eyes wide and his expression furious. Jyn glares up at him and sets her jaw stubbornly. There is no way in any of the infinite hells that she is going to leave him in here to face this alone.

“I can pin you,” she says shortly, before he can rip into her.

He snorts, his hands flexing on her shoulders like he can’t decide whether he means to pull her in tight or shake the teeth from her head. He opens and closes his mouth twice before he steps in close and puts his mouth against her ear. “Jyn,” he snarls, so low that she can barely hear him, lower than the recorders in the room can probably pick up. “I am a fucking _assassin._ ”

“So?” She fights to keep her voice even, unimpressed. It’s harder than she expected, because her heart is galloping in her chest and her throat is tight as a fist. “I’m still better at hand to hand than you.”

It’s a weak argument and they both know it. This drug will peel away all his filters, his inhibitions, hells, it sounds like it will take even his higher order thought processes if he won’t even be able to _speak_. And while Jyn is excellent at hand to hand single combat, she will be hobbled by her need to keep them both unharmed as possible. He will be trying to kill her. And maybe himself.

“Please,” Cassian breathes in her ear, and she closes her eyes because it hurts to hear him ask her this, hurts to know that her answer will hurt him, too. “Please just…go outside.”

She can’t speak, her voice stolen by fear and rage and a desperate wish to just throw her arms around his neck and beg him not to do it, tell him they don’t need these wrinkled sacks of shit, they can just…they can just leave. Go back, mission failed but that happened sometimes, and at least the field operatives had returned unharmed. That was something.

That was everything. At least to her.

He won’t do it. Even if the Cragmoloids hadn’t thrown cruisers and mines and stolen weapons onto the table, the moment they had spoken of slaves, Cassian was theirs. He would do what he had to do, he would strip himself bare to free people who would never know he existed.

Jyn holds her breath, and waits.

She feels it, the moment she wins. Cassian’s grip on her shoulders tightens to the point of pain, and then he lets go and steps back. She opens her eyes and looks up at him, and with his back to the screens he lets himself look…exhausted. Frightened. Resolved. He meets her eyes and lets her see everything he’s thinking, everything he fears, and then, slowly, he bricks it all back up. His eyes shutter and his mouth flattens, the lines around his eyes ease and vanish. He straightens at last, and it is Captain Cassian Andor, experienced and bloody handed rebel spy with ice water in his veins, who turns on his heel and walks calmly to the table.

He picks up the syringe and faces the Speakers. “I would like it understood,” he says loudly and calmly, “that if my partner at any time asks to be released from this room, or if she is in danger of falling unconscious, you will immediately sedate me, and see her to safety.” He lifts the syringe and stares Broken Tusk right in the eye, “Investigation be damned,” he finishes coldly.

“We hear, and understand,” Broken Tusk agrees solemnly. “In the arm will be sufficient, Speaker Alliance. We look forward to knowing your truth.”

The screens go black, and then retract into the walls. Metal panels slide down over them. Jyn sneers; they probably don’t want to risk damage to the expensive electronics.

Cassian turns to her, his face pale but still shut off and blank. “You can’t trust me,” he tells her. “Whatever I do, however harmless I make myself look, you can’t trust me. Do you understand?”

_Say you understand_ , someone whispers in her memory. Jyn steps on the thought, hard, and nods.

“Take off your jacket,” she orders, and strips her own, tossing it onto one of the cushions to the side of the door. Cassian pulls off his leather jacket and throws it to her; he won’t come within arm’s reach of her while he’s still in control of himself, she can see it on his face. Probably wants to give her as much room to see him coming as he can. She drops the jacket on top of her own, and unlaces her boots too. He seems to get the idea then, stripping off his boots, his belt, and the packet of lockpicks and small shivs he keeps strapped to his ankle. It all goes on the pile by the door, everything they have that is hard, or metal, or has a sharp edge. When they are done, they are wearing only their trousers, socks, shirts. Nothing that can be made into an effective weapon. Nothing that would amplify a punch or a kick. As safe, she thinks, as they can render themselves.

At last, Cassian holds up the syringe. “No more stalling,” he says quietly.

Jyn scowls, feels her lip tremble just slightly as a little of her terror seeps past her control, and shakes her head hard to stop it. “Yeah,” she agrees roughly. “Just do it. If you have to.”

He nods. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, and then turns and slips the needle into his forearm. Jyn watches, wondering where he learned to do that with such practiced ease. It takes only a second for the white liquid in the syringe to vanish into his veins, and then Cassian tosses the empty syringe into the shallow cavity of the table. It closes again, sealing away the cursed thing, which tells Jyn both that the Cragmoloids are probably watching, and they at least have some shred of mercy.

Not enough for her to forgive them, but at least he won’t come at her with a fucking syringe.

Cassian jerks, and Jyn’s heart tries to tear it’s way out of her body.

He takes a step back. She doesn’t step forward; she _wants_ to, but he was right, she might need the distance to see him coming. He’s got longer reach, and frighteningly good reflexes. Jyn swallows the bitter bile in her throat and breathes as smoothly as she can, trying to force her heart into a steadier rhythm. He will probably go for her neck, try to snap her spine. A quick, efficient death. He’s always been merciful like that, when he can be. She doesn’t really think that will change.

Cassian’s eyes squeeze shut, he staggers slightly, his hands flexing at his sides randomly.

He stills.

Breathes.

His shoulders sag, his jaw relaxes, his hands stretch once more and then fall slack at his sides.

If he weren’t still standing, she would think he had passed out.

She swallows. Long seconds stretch out between them, and for a hysterical moment Jyn wonders if he really did pass out, sleeping on his feet the way they always joke he probably could.

Then he opens his eyes.

Cassian lifts his head and looks around the room curiously, as if he’s never seen it. He shifts his weight, and his leg bumps the low table. He peers down at it with mild bewilderment, stepping lightly to the side to avoid bumping it again.

Jyn forces herself to settle into a defensive stance, her hands up, her feet braced. The move catches his eye, and Cassian turns towards her.

He looks from her raised hands to her grim face, and the bewilderment fades slowly into…something else, something odd. Speculative, almost. A little sad, maybe, but she isn’t sure, can’t be sure with her heart pounding against her ribcage and a small voice screaming in the back of her head. _I’m sorry_ , she wants to echo back to him, _I’m sorry I couldn’t get the damn door open, I’m sorry I couldn’t figure out how to escape, I’m sorry you had to do this, why the fuck did you think you had to do this?_

Cassian lifts his hands. He does it so slowly that at first she doesn’t even notice he’s doing it, but eventually he raises them, palms out, level with his shoulders. He stands like that for a moment, watching her carefully with his hands up as if he is surrendering to her.

Jyn keeps her breathing even, her muscles tensed lightly. She doesn’t move, waiting for his next move. She’s backed against the door, but there’s enough room for her to crab to the left if he comes at her. Not much, the room is pretty small, but if he doesn’t move too fast, she can get around him move to the table. It’s not wide enough that he can’t strike her across it, but it will force him to either leap over it or go around it to get her in a decent hold.

Cassian steps forward.

Jyn slides left.

He stops, frowning, and the expression looks so much like his normal expression, his eyes searching hers while calculations play out in them, looking so much like he always does when confronted with some complex yet important problem – but it’s not him, it’s not normal, because the problem he might be working out is how to kill her and smash himself to pieces, all at the behest of a bunch of wrinkly, suspicious, self-righteous sons of diseased –

Cassian crouches, his hands still in the air, and then slowly rolls down to his knees.

Jyn’s mental tirade cuts off, startled at the unexpected move. “What the hells are you doing?”

Cassian doesn’t answer ( _can’t_ answer, allegedly, and maybe can’t understand either), but he lets his hands fall softly to his lap. He leans back, sitting balanced on his heels, and flips his hands palm up on his thighs. It’s a difficult position from which to rise quickly, and makes it very obvious that he has no weapons. It’s the kind of position someone trying to look harmless would take.

He said, _you can’t trust me_.

Cassian looks up at her, and his face softens into a smile, warm, inviting, calm.

He said, _do you understand?_

He meets her eyes, cocks his head to the side, and the smile broadens.

_Say you understand._

Jyn shakes her head, does her best to glower at him. “You’re _not_ harmless,” she tells him.

The words seem to breeze right around him without impact – he really must not understand right now, because if a contact said something like that, he would immediately change his tactic. But he doesn’t move, doesn’t even seem to notice that she’s spoken, just continues to sit there and smile at her, his mouth pulled up into a gentle, humorous twist and his eyes bright. He lifts his right hand, holds it out to her.

“I’m not coming over there,” Jyn shakes her head again.

 Cassian’s eyebrows raise, and then lower. And then raise again.

Well that’s…new.

And then he blinks at her. The slow, slightly mistimed blink that means he’s trying to wink at her.

Jyn’s breath catches, because that is _Cassian._ She hasn’t met all his alternate identities, but she’s seen him don and discard most of them, and not one of them uses that move. In all the long months they’ve worked together after Scarif, in all the many times she’s watched him charm a mark or work a possible recruit into a state of ease or just deal with the stressed out members of the rebellion every day, he’s smiled, he’s gestured, he’s used his body language to telegraph weakness or safety or any number of soothing things to the target.

But he’s only ever winked when they were somewhere safe and alone; he’s only ever done it when he was trying to be funny, trying to make her laugh.

Cassian’s eyes flick down to her hands. Jyn realizes a beat late that she’s let her guard relax, but before she can shift hastily back into a more efficient defensive stance, he looks back up at her and his grin turns positively _delighted._ It throws her off, the sheer happiness in his face. He barely looks like that when they are safe on their ship or curled up in some bolt hole with no one on their tails. He’s certainly never looked so openly happy when they were surrounded by hostiles (or even just neutrals). Yet here he sits, blatantly pleased that she has dropped her fists. That she trusts him.

Cassian rolls his shoulders back as if stretching after a long day of work. The move makes his shirt pull across his chest, and when he catches her attention shifting downward, he winks at her again.

Jyn lowers her hands to her sides. “Cassian Andor,” she says severely. “Are you _flirting_ with me?”

He laughs. It’s a soft sound, a chuckle low in his throat, and she doesn’t think it’s a response to her words. More likely, he’s just pleased that she’s straightened from her fighting stance, now standing a few steps away and watching him warily. He dips his head, curves the fingers on his outstretched hand. Not quite a ‘come here’ gesture, but definitely an invitation.

He said, _you can’t trust me_.

Jyn’s heart aches inside her chest, her muscles feel battered and sore even though she’s done nothing but stand here the whole time. Indecision freezes her to the spot, her mind warring between what he said and what he seems.

He said, _I am an assassin. I am a liar._

Cassian lowers his outstretched hand, his smile easing into something less intense but still pleased. He sighs, although she’s not entirely sure why, and then nods to her in understanding. He doesn’t try to beckon her over again; instead, he just sits there, looking at her, relaxed and apparently willing to stay there for the next…well, she supposes the next six hours or so.

Jyn clears her throat. “That’s not good for your back,” she says, and points down at his legs, still folded under him on the white stone floor.

Cassian follows her gesture, the faintly bewildered frown marring the happiness on his face for a moment.

“Your back,” Jyn points at her own spine. “You can’t sit like that for the whole time. At least go over there.” She shifts her finger to a large blue cushion resting on the floor next to Cassian. “Sit there.”

He looks at her, uncomprehending. Absently, he rubs one hand on his left leg, the leg that has a pin in the femur from where he nearly shattered it falling down the Scarif tower. If he keeps kneeling on it like that, he’s going to limp for days. And he probably can’t even remember it, right now. There’s a chance he won’t remember any of this when the drug wears off, which means he won’t know why his leg, or his back, hurt so badly.

Fire and fuck, these Cragmoloids are _bastards_ and she is going to – to – blow up one of their salt pillars or something. “Go _there_ ,” she commands again, but gives it up when he doesn’t even turn to look where she’s pointing. She feels like an ass anyway, shouting orders at him like a Coruscanti tourist in the Outer Rim bellowing at a local who doesn’t speak Basic. “Just…get up,” she mutters in frustration.

He doesn’t, of course, but he does wince and roll to the side, pulling his left leg out from underneath him until he’s only kneeling on his right leg now. He prods at his bad femur, frowning, and looks back up at Jyn with an eyebrow raised.

“You hurt it,” she explains, though he won’t understand. The Cragmoloids are listening though, and Jyn’s still angry as shit, so she raises her voice for their benefit and adds, “You were hurt when you risked your life to save the galaxy from the Death Star.”

She sinks all her rage and loathing into the last two words, and a petty part of her hopes they strike right into the Cragmoloids. She hopes they understand what that means. Maybe one or two of the wrinkly arseholes will even feel some guilt for doing this to a man who has already fought and suffered on their behalf.

Probably not, but it makes her feel a little better.

Cassian’s expression turns intent again, clearly bothered by her tone even if he doesn’t understand the words. He opens his mouth, then startles when nothing comes out, as if he’s surprised to discover that he can’t speak. He turns back to her with a grey tinge to his face, a hint of fear creeping into his eyes, and Jyn finds herself stepping closer, holding up her hands. “It’s okay,” she says awkwardly. “It’s just a drug. It’ll go away. You’re…you’re okay, Cassian. You’ll be okay.”

Moving with less grace than she’s come to expect from him, Cassian pushes himself slowly to his feet. He stares at his left leg, his hand drifting up to his lower back and then back to his side. When he turns back to her this time, there’s a familiar kind of weariness in his face. The circles under his eyes and the tired lines around his mouth are suddenly more pronounced, the calm humor of before fading back into the dark of his eyes.

“It’s okay,” she says again, helpless and hating it. “It’s okay.”

He tilts his head down to look at her and – oh, shit, she’s close enough that he has to look down at her face. She’s definitely within his arm’s reach. She almost jolts back again, out of reach, and from the look that flashes across his face, he sees her start to move.

He closes his eyes and bows his head, just as he did when the serum first took effect.

She ought to move away. He would want her to move away, if he were sober enough to know who she was and who he was. What he was.

_Assassin,_ he says in her memory, his lip curling over the word as he spits it like an insult. _Liar. Spy_.

_Partner,_ she thinks. _Friend. Cassian_.

He’s going to be furious with her when he snaps out of this.

Jyn crosses the short distance between them, and takes both his hands. He keeps his eyes closed, his fingers lax in her grip, but some of the lines around his mouth ease. Jyn lifts his arms and wraps them both around her shoulders, and he settles his arms comfortably around her without resistance. Moving carefully now, because this is treading into sticky territory when he’s not in total control of his mind, Jyn slips her arms around his waist and presses her forehead against his shoulder. “It’s okay,” she murmurs into his shirt.

If he snaps her neck, she thinks, he’ll never forgive himself. But if she has been misjudging him this whole time, then it’s better they both know about it right here and now.

Cassian sighs, and leans against her, resting his cheek against her temple.

Hidden by his shoulder, Jyn lets herself smile. She hasn’t misjudged him at all.

Cassian shifts his weight (she tenses, her heart twisting in her chest for just a moment, one terrible, uncertain moment) and tugs her to the side.

She stumbles at the pull, and he pauses while she recovers, pulling away enough to see her face.

“What?” She asks automatically, forgetting for a moment that he can’t answer.

Cassian tugs again, a small, easily resisted pull on her shoulders. Cautiously, she shifts to the side where he directs, and the weariness in his face relaxes again to a faint smile. He tugs again, and then Jyn’s foot hits a big blue cushion.

She looks down at it, then back up at him, and narrows her eyes. “You knew exactly what I was trying to say when I told you to sit on this cushion, didn’t you?”

Cassian just looks at her, innocence radiating from him like a sun.

Another brief, uncertain stab of fear – _you can’t trust me, say you understand_ – but Jyn’s tired of fear, she’s so fucking tired of it. She’s been afraid her whole life, save for brief flashes of safety, precious moments of comfort and warmth and the certainty that someone would protect her, someone would stay with her, someone would let her protect them in turn. Most of those moments have been with Cassian.

She’s trusted him from the beginning, even before she knew she was doing it. She’s not about to let a few paranoid politicians and a syringe stop her from doing it now.

“Fine,” she says, and pulls herself free from his arms. Cassian doesn’t bother to hide his disappointment – it’s so disturbing, how easy it is to read him right now, and she hates that the Cragmoloids probably have some hidden camera in here, _hates_ that they get to see what so few ever see of him – but he lets her go without hesitation.

Jyn sits on the cushion, reaches up and grabs his hand, and yanks sharply.

Cassian stumbles down to the cushion next to her with a startled grunt, only just catching himself on his free hand. He blinks at her, then chuckles again, and unselfconsciously settles himself back on the cushion. It’s large enough that she can completely stretch out on it, and he can fit if he folds up his longer legs. He turns on his side and bends his knees until he’s relaxed on it, and then slowly, deliberately, raises his hand to her again.

Jyn hesitates – he’s not entirely in his right mind, and she needs to make sure they have very specific boundaries set up so when he wakes up she can promise him that nothing…nothing unforgivable happened. No lines were crossed. At last, she shuffles as far back as the cushion will allow (only a few centimeters, but that should be enough to make her point), and lies down on her side facing him. She grabs his offered hand and twines their fingers together on the cushion between them, the only other point of contact the faint brush of her bent knees against his thighs.

“I can’t sleep,” she drops her voice and gives him a stern look, “because you told them to stop the whole thing if I went unconscious.”

Cassian folds his free arm under his head and looks at her quietly, his eyes tracing her face, watching her mouth with the sleepy appreciation of someone watching a meteor shower late at night, or a beloved holovid for the hundredth time, or some other familiar and soothing sight.

“But you can,” Jyn murmurs. “You should. Go to sleep, Cassian.” She glances at the room around them out of the corner of her eye, a hint of a growl in her words. “You might as well. We’re not going anywhere for awhile.”

Cassian’s thumb traces over the back of her hand in small, soft circles. When she stops side-eying their captors and meets his gaze, he smiles at her, raises his eyebrows.

She sighs, resettles her head on the cushion. “No,” she grumbles at him. “I’m not over it. They owe us for this, and I’m not going to let them forget it.”

His smile softens, and then his eyes drift shut, his thumb stills on her hand, and Cassian falls smoothly, instantly, into sleep.

Jyn wiggles her hand inside his, just enough so she can press her forefinger to his wrist. Under her touch, his pulse thrums steadily. He really is asleep, more deeply than she’s seen him sleep in a long time. Maybe it’s the drug, but a small, hopeful part of her hopes it’s just…it’s just that he feels safe enough to relax, that he’s comfortable on this thick cushion with her hand in his, that for once he’s not buzzing with nightmares and tension and the endless list of things he needs to accomplish, things he’s done in the course of the war, things he’s failed to do.

She hopes he’s sleeping so deeply because he’s happy.

“This isn’t your truth,” she tells him softly, hunting for the right words. “Filters and rules and shit aren’t lies we tell. They’re just…they’re choices. Choices are part of us, too. Our choices are part of us.” She takes a long, slow breath, and for the first time since they landed on this planet, she feels her chest loosen, her own heart slow and slip into easy synch with his pulse tapping against her fingers. “You taught me that.”

She stops, because there are a lot more words crowding through her head, half-formed ideas and sentence fragments, and if they were somewhere truly private she might try to sort through them, speak them out loud until she found the right combination that would tell him how important it was to her that he made the choices he made, that he allowed her to make her own. She might stumble towards the truths she wanted him to know, and he wouldn’t have to fucking drug her to learn who she was, because Cassian was patient and observant and he took the time to know her. He welcomed her home and then waited for her to choose to walk into it.

But they aren’t alone, and he can’t hear her right now anyway, so Jyn packs away the rambling thoughts, rests her finger firmly against his pulse, and shrugs as much as she can while lying down. “I’ll be here when you wake up,” she says. “We can talk about it then.”

Cassian twitches a little in his sleep, dragging her hand a centimeter or so closer to his chest. The slack lines of his face tense slightly, his mouth curving up for a brief moment into the gentle half-smile she knows so well, and then fading again into deep sleep.

Jyn mirrors the expression back, and settles herself for a long wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The [Cragmoloids](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Cragmoloid) are basically elephant people, and everything I said about their history with the Empire is canon. They also, canonically, have a deep social stigma against duplicity. Their rituals, politics, and the surface of their planet (modeled after the [Sahara El Beyda](https://unusualplaces.org/sahara-el-beyda-a-natural-desert-view-thats-worth-millions/), is my own weird headcanons. 
> 
> This is also as close as I will ever come to writing a "sex pollen" story. Sorry.


	6. Shovel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For @riderunlove, who prompted "Bodhi gives Cassian the shovel talk." It's not my favorite trope for a variety of reasons, so I had to mess with it a bit.

"And what,” Jyn asked, her eyes narrow, “is an Overhead Double?”

  
“A procedure detailed in your Standard Operating Procedures manual,” Draven replied impassively, not looking up from his datapad.

  
To Cassian’s left, Bodhi shuffled his feet uncomfortably, and Jyn’s jaw tightened as she shifted in front of her friend. Cassian raised his eyebrows; he knew for a fact that Jyn had read through the SOP, because she had sat on his bed in his quarters and made disparaging comments about how the Alliance overcomplicated everything, comparing the tactics to Saw’s standard procedures the whole way. Cassian recalled that three hours of sitting with her with an intensity that he didn’t particularly want to examine at the moment – Jyn tore apart the basic structures of his life for the last twenty years, examined them with a critical eye, and reframed them in terms that he both recognized and those that he didn’t. It had not been entirely comfortable, but it had been…compelling. Not that he was going to share that with anyone.

  
But it meant that her question, and the fact that she had actually bothered to ask Draven and not find out for herself, was strange.

Cassian scanned both of his teammate’s faces, noted the anger in Jyn’s, and the embarrassment in Bodhi’s. Ah. So the question had been for Bodhi’s benefit, not her own. Their friend was new to the rebellion yet, still recovering from his mental injuries on Jedha (and Eadu, and Scarif, if he was being thorough), and Rebel Intelligence was not an easy place to start a career in anti-establishmentarianism. But Bodhi wasn’t fit yet to apply for the Fleet, and when Jyn had announced that Bodhi would stick with his team…Cassian had signed and submitted the request form.

  
He had a team now. That was also…compelling. New. Terrifying. Incredible. _Something_. He hadn’t found the right word yet.

  
“A three-person tactic,” Cassian said calmly, looking down at his own datapad and briskly tapping at the various files he had begun to compile, templates for his future de-briefing that he could fill in as Draven prepped them for the op. “Two operatives go in to a field situation with joint covers, usually as siblings or married - ”

  
“The Double,” Jyn said quietly, still staring at Draven with a hard-eyed glower. The General sipped his caf.

  
Cassian fought the smile that tugged at his lips. “And the third operative remains back, out of sight and keeping tabs on the running operation.”

  
Bodhi fiddled with the thick glove over his metal hand. “The, uh, the Overhead?”

  
“Right,” Cassian glanced up and gave Bodhi a reassuring nod. It was not a big deal that Bodhi wasn’t familiar with Rebel Intel’s procedures and terminology. The Infiltration and Observation mission on the table was probably a good op for him – he could hang back in the ship, watch Cassian and Jyn work, help out with communications and maybe watching through the sliced security feeds. Idly, Cassian started mentally working through a good cover story for himself and Jyn. No one would believe ‘siblings,’ but they could possibly pull off ‘business partners’ or even ‘married,’ depending on –

  
Married to Jyn. There was a…a thought.

  
“We have a possible supplier of repulsor coils,” Draven’s voice cut through Cassian’s drifting thoughts, and he rolled his shoulders and reset his weight on his heels, shoving the half-formed images from his head and focusing on the brief at hand. “The source is offering to help us divert repulsor coils and other engine parts that typically travel to the Empire down the Shiritoku trade route. Usurpation of that supply line would mean significant increase in operational capability for our Fleet.”

  
Cassian frowned; Shiritoku trade route? That one ran far out into the Outer Rim, and wasn’t nearly as well-used or as profitable to the Empire, although of course any victory for the Alliance…what was along the Shiritoku…?  
Wait. Shiritoku trade route, repulsor coils – oh shit, surely not. Draven couldn’t be sending them to deal with -

  
“Who and where?” Jyn asked coolly, her arms folded as she leaned a hip against the briefing room table.

  
“The source is two Kurtzen, in Kishh’daar on the planet Bakura,” Draven informed her, and Cassian’s stomach sank.

  
“Sir,” he said a touch sharply, because Draven of all people should know why this was a bad idea. “ _Bakura_.”

  
“I am aware, Major,” Draven finally looked up from his datapad to meet Cassian’s eyes, clearly already anticipating this conversation, “of your former difficulties on that planet.”

  
“Difficulties?” Bodhi twisted at the edge of his shirt sleeve, wrapping it tight around his fingers again and again. Cassian caught Jyn’s glance and tilted his head down; her lips flattened as she followed his direction, and she reached out to catch Bodhi’s wrist and tug his fingers free from the binding cloth before they turned any more blue.

  
“However, that was five years ago, and we have a work around,” Draven went back to his datapad.

  
_Workaround_. That could mean anything from total facial reconstruction to bribing every official on the planet. “Sir,” Cassian started again, snapping his datapad to his belt and straightening, locking his hands behind his back. “Bakura may have been much less technologically advanced when I was last there – “

  
“But the Empire has since invaded and beefed up the security grid, I am aware, Major.”

  
Jyn didn’t push herself off the table, but her shoulders were suddenly tense and her crossed arms now looked defensive rather than indifferent. “You got a bounty on your head there or something?”

  
 Cassian stared at Draven, but the General simply kept tapping at his datapad. “Something like that,” he muttered.

  
“Can you, um,” Bodhi picked at his sleeve again, caught himself, and stuffed his hands sheepishly into his pockets, “wear a, a disguise?”

  
“I do not think they have any images of me, none that would threaten me now,” Cassian explained slowly when Draven continued to drink his caf and read his datapad without comment. “But there is a significant possibility that they have a,” he shook his head, “a scent profile.”

  
“A…what?”

  
“Kurtzen have good noses,” Jyn explained to Bodhi, although she kept her eyes on Cassian. “And they keep an archive of smells that they gather with these little sniffer bots. If someone logged Cassian’s smell, they might catch him again. It’s as good in their society as a picture is in ours.”

  
Draven sipped his caf and set the empty mug on the table. “We have no confirmation that Major Andor was correctly logged as a rebel agent on Bakura.”

  
“Understood, sir,” Cassian said, but his mind still buzzed – if he was already compromised, how would he work the contact? Perhaps the source for the repulsor coils was not simply anti-Empire but a more general anti-government, and so wouldn’t care that he was technically a wanted criminal on that planet. He would have to rely on Jyn to speak to the natives more than himself, which was probably fine since she seemed to have a working knowledge of the species -

  
“Send us somewhere else,” Jyn said, and Cassian’s thoughts derailed in surprise. She was glowering at Draven, and her voice had dropped into a low, tense register. She looked, he thought, like a blade gleaming in a dark alley, like a viper coiled to strike. She had also shifted her weight again, this time to put herself slightly between Cassian and Draven. “Get another team into Bakura, and send us somewhere else.”

  
Cassian shook his head at her, fighting to keep the sudden warmth in his stomach from showing on his face. “I can handle –“

  
“It’s a big risk,” Bodhi interrupted. His face was startlingly fierce, his hands stilled at his sides. “Cassian’s a good asset, you can’t afford to lose him over some engine parts.” Abruptly he seemed to notice that everyone else in the room was looking at him, and his voice faltered on the last word, his hands clenching tightly into his shirt cuffs. But he didn’t look away from Draven, who raised an eyebrow at him, and then turned to peer at Cassian.

  
Cassian raised his hands, palm up, and then dropped them, at a loss for words.

  
“Your concerns are noted.” Draven matched stares with Jyn for a moment (the warmth in Cassian’s stomach seeped out into his chest), and then the General sighed, and sat down in the bare metal chair next to the table. Suddenly, he looked…tired. Cassian blinked. It had been a long time since he had seen that particular expression on his commander. Not since, what? They received a report on the Geonosis genocide, maybe.  
“If I had anyone else to send, Erso,” he said quietly, tossing his datapad on the table with a faint clatter and picking up the empty caf mug. “I would have done it a month ago.”

  
It had been, Cassian thought to himself, a difficult six months for the Alliance, after the Death Star.

  
Jyn’s jaw tensed, Bodhi stared at the floor, and Cassian took a slow, quiet breath. “We’ll prep and depart in three hours, sir.”

  
Draven nodded, staring into his caf mug. Then he cleared his throat and picked up his datapad, and it was General Draven, Head of Rebel Intelligence (Field Operations) who sat in that chair once more. “Your cover identities have been provided. You’ll find them in the file. Andor, I expect a check-in every five days.”

  
Cassian nodded, not entirely sure he could trust his voice. A five day check-in cycle was unusual. Typically reserved for high-stakes, tense missions with a lot of valuable assets riding on it. This mission was listed as ‘medium risk,’ and Cassian himself was the only command-rated asset on the line.

  
“Dismissed,” Draven said gruffly, determinedly tapping at the datapad in front of his face.

  
“Well,” Bodhi said with a weak smile as they filed out into the corridor and moved towards the hangar. “That was…um…”

  
Jyn’s shoulder bumped Cassian’s arm. “Something,” she said quietly. Humor glimmered in her eyes, though the rest of her face was as wary as always.

  
“Yes,” Cassian said, letting a little of the warmth that still curled inside him show. There was hardly anyone in the corridor at this time of day, only her and Bodhi and a few passing soldiers deep in their own discussion at the other end of the hall. “I don’t think I’ve seen Draven drink an entire mug of caf in five minutes like that.”

  
The corner of Jyn’s mouth quirked up, just enough that it was probably invisible to anyone further away than Cassian. It felt a little like an in-joke, the two of them laughing at the absurdities of the world, and now the warmth was definitely flaring from his chest up to his face. If he wasn’t careful, he would start blushing, or something else dangerously obvious. Cassian cleared his throat and looked away…to find Bodhi on his other side, looking determinedly down the hallway like something of great interest was happening on the blank wall in front of him.

  
“So,” Bodhi said after a short beat. “Uh. Bakura. What’s, um, what’s my role, you know, this time?”

  
Right. Cassian unclipped his datapad, grateful for something to focus on. Let’s see, Operation Pickpocket, Update Received. Good, that was probably the forged identities. Some of Cassian’s good mood banked as he wondered briefly what Draven’s “workaround” was for Cassian. Something that masked scent? There weren’t many things in the galaxy that did that, and none that did it consistently or well. Hopefully it wouldn’t be anything painful; Jyn would be resistant to anything that hurt him or caused permanent damage. He wasn’t much thrilled at the prospect, either.

  
The first two identities popped up together. Siv and Catta Geller, freelance merchants, married three years.

  
Ah, so, married then. Well, that shouldn’t be too difficult to –

  
Siv and Catta’s images loaded under the identity headers.

  
He stopped.

  
Jyn stopped, too, almost exactly the same time. Bodhi walked a few more steps before he realized the others weren’t with him, and turned back.

  
Jyn tilted her chin up at him, and from the corner of his eye he could see her tensing. “Cassian?”

  
“Overhead,” he said, stupidly, his brain kicking back in. Whose idea was this? Had someone given Mission Planning the incorrect files?

  
“What about it?” Jyn moved closer, her hand hovering in the air between them, a few centimeters from his sleeve. “Cassian, Bodhi’s good, he can hang in the ship and keep an eye on things.”

  
“Yeah, I’m, uh, not, you know, trained like you.” Bodhi made a random gesture. “But I can watch screens with the best of them.” He laughed weakly, the sound petering out in the muffled sounds of the hallway around them.

  
“I know you can,” Cassian paused, ran his tongue over his dry lips. “But Bodhi’s not playing the Overhead role.” He glanced back at the datapad, but no, he’d read it correctly the first time. Draven’s workaround was now painfully obvious. He really should have seen it coming, and it was a little worrying that he had not even considered it. In the back of his head, a small voice he tried very hard not to listen to whispered _the surgery would have been easier._

  
“ _I_ am.”  
 

* * *

  
“Can’t we just, um, say we’re siblings?” Bodhi nervously tugged at his jacket collar, pulling it awkwardly out of place across his shoulders.

  
“If Kishh’daar were only Kurtzen, we could probably pull that off,” Cassian said, focused intently on the console, running through the old freighter’s shut down checks more thoroughly than was perhaps strictly necessary. “But there are far too many Humans here, and the Kurtzen will know that you don’t look like siblings.”

  
“Adopted,” Jyn said stubbornly from behind him.

  
Cassian didn’t turn to look at her over his shoulder, although he could feel her leaning her weight against the back of his seat. His back ached faintly, the implants pulling against his tense muscles. “Possible, but then you would have to explain that, and it makes you even more memorable. We want the source to give you access to the repulsor coils, but not to remember you much afterwards.”

  
Bodhi opened his mouth and started to speak, and then abruptly cut off. Jyn was deadly silent behind him. Cassian resisted the urge to shift in the chair, stubbornly refusing to admit that the old, ragged padding was aggravating his back. He supposed he ought to get used to sitting in chairs like this, in the cockpit of the ship while his team went on without him. He’d thought…the therapists said the implants would settle and integrate into his body, that he’d be back at working condition within the year. Draven, it seemed, was less enthusiastic about his odds.

  
The dull ache in Cassian’s back agreed.

  
A faint warmth brushed near Cassian’s right shoulder – he heard the faint scrape of leather gloves against his shirt, and then Jyn withdrew her hand. “Low roads, or high?”

  
“The low roads will take three hours,” he said. “The high will take two, unless you’re caught in the lunch rush, then it could take much longer.”

  
Cassian opened the ship’s holonet link and entered a series of codes. The auxiliary power hummed around him as multiple screens popped up, showing him a panorama view of the gracefully curved glass towers outside. Kishh’daar’s swooping skyscrapers wound sinuously up from a wide plain of knee-high brilliant blue grasses that undulated in the bright sunlight. The many shades of bright blue grass made the buildings look like glittering sails of massive ships floating on a calm blue sea. It was beautiful.

  
Cassian scowled at it, then wiped his face blank before the other two could notice. “High roads look busy. Better take the low. I don’t want to be stuck here all day.”

  
He winced internally as he said it, the acid in his tone too blatant, too obvious.

  
“It’s too bad,” Bodhi said after an awkward beat. “Um, I mean that Kay couldn’t, couldn’t come along. You’d have some, you know, some company.”

  
Cassian felt his jaw tightening, and forced it loose again. “Yes, a pity,” he agreed, his voice a little more flat than he would like. Bakura had a culture based around “life energy,” which meant they took relationships very seriously, and considered droids to be…well, the government here enforced high tariffs on ownership of droids and most establishments did not permit them entry. There were even a few local gangs that made a point of destroying droids when they saw them, as a form of initiation for their new members. It had been safer to leave Kay behind.

  
Of course, that meant Cassian would spend the majority of this mission sitting in the cockpit of the empty freighter, watching Jyn and Bodhi play a married couple on a planet crawling with Imperials, alone.

  
His jaw felt tight again.

  
“Comms on,” Jyn said quietly behind him, stepping away from his chair. Cassian kept his eyes on the console. “We’ll stay hot mike the whole time.”

  
“Good,” Cassian nodded.

  
“Security grid in the city is pathetic,” Jyn went on, sounding a few steps further away. “Should be easy to follow us.”

  
“Mm hm.”

  
“We can handle this,” Jyn’s voice had an edge to it that cut into Cassian’s focus on the screens. He blinked, twisted around in the chair (grimacing at the tense pull of his lower back as he did), and met her eyes.

  
“Of course,” he said, a little surprised at the wary, closed expression on her face. Was she nervous about the op? “Jyn,” he put his hand on the back of his seat and prepared to push himself up and walk across to her. “Of course you can. You’ve handled worse than this without –“

  
“Yes,” she cut him off sharply, and Cassian froze, still sitting. “We have.”

  
The silence stretched again, until the screens on the console beeped; his last program had run itself to completion, granting him access to the traffic management grids as well as the street cameras. A large, complex map of commercial routes, street traffic patterns, and layered grav-car directories popped open and illuminated the cockpit. It cast odd colored lines across Jyn’s face, making it difficult to pick out the subtle cues of her expression that he had come to rely on in these months since Scarif. Since he had woken up to see her standing over him, soft around the edges and so, so bright.

  
“Comms on,” she repeated, and walked out of the cockpit.

  
“See you, um, soon?” Bodhi patted Cassian’s shoulder tentatively, and then hurried after Jyn.

  
Cassian turned back to the console. On the smallest screen by his elbow, he could see the mounted security camera on the freighter just outside the exit ramp. Jyn strode into view, the high angle making it impossible to see her face, but highlighting the rigid set of her shoulders. Bodhi appeared a few steps behind her, fiddling with his sleeves again. Bodhi turned his head to look at her, and Cassian scrambled for the earpiece he had left sitting on the console. He jammed it into his ear in time to hear “- know how are we supposed to…?”

  
“Stay close,” Jyn told him, and while the hard edge was still in her voice, some of the stiffness left her posture. “Got your scandocs?”

  
Bodhi tapped his right pocket.

  
“Good. Let’s go.”

  
They started to move down the ramp, and Cassian opened his mouth to point out the immediate problem, then closed it again. He had a feeling Jyn would not appreciate his interference. She paused almost before he had finished the thought. “Bodhi,” she said quietly. “Walk on the left. My blaster is here,” she pointed at her right side, at the faint bulge under her jacket. “If you’re on this side, you might block my line of sight if I have to shoot.”

  
“Sorry,” he muttered, and shuffled around to her other side.

  
“’S fine.” Jyn hesitated, and even through the poor camera, Cassian could see her debating before she finally stepped closer and threw her arm around Bodhi’s waist. He jumped slightly in surprise, then awkwardly wrapped his own arm around her shoulders.

  
“Married,” he said with a weak smile.

  
“Married,” Jyn agreed firmly. Bodhi’s smile settled a little, and Jyn’s shoulders dropped a little further under his arm.

  
Cassian leaned back in his chair. “Comms on,” he said briskly. “You need to move.”

  
The smile vanished from Bodhi’s face, and Jyn turned and practically towed him down the ramp.

  
The door snapped shut with a faint hiss he could pick up through the comm, and Cassian watched them walk away in the space port cameras, leaving him in the silent ship.  
 

* * *

  
“Ah, sorry,” Bodhi hissed in Cassian’s ear. On the hijacked security feed, Cassian watched Bodhi flinch back from Jyn, hopping a little to keep from stepping on her foot again.

Several grav-cars zoomed between the camera and his team, and Cassian took a deep breath to stop himself from growling as he flipped through the available cameras for a better option. The one blessing of an authoritarian government, he thought with a bitter sense of irony, was the centralized security grid.

  
Jyn waved a dismissive hand at him, and elbowed her way forward through the afternoon crowd. Bodhi hurried to catch up as she turned the last corner and made it to the door that led to the meeting spot. The small, run-down mzoli flickered with various patchwork lights, dim in the still bright sunlight. There was a fenced-in patio in front of the little restaurant with battered but serviceable chairs and tables. In the far corner, away from the main street but near the entrance to the back alley, a Kurtzen couple sat shoulder to shoulder at a small round table. The larger lizard had the dull beige coloring of a female, the smaller was bright blue with green and red stripes around his face.

  
Cassian tapped the earpiece. “There they are. Left side, in the back. Two Kurtzen.”

  
“Mark,” Jyn replied calmly. On the screen, she sauntered forward, angled towards the contacts but not headed right for them. Bodhi nervously tugged at his ear, caught himself, and stuffed his hands into his pockets.

  
Cassian studied the image of the contacts before him. There were faint drab green markings on the female’s face, although they seemed painted on and not a natural part of her rough skin. They mimicked the distinct pattern on the male’s face almost perfectly. Cassian ran through his mental files of Kurtzen culture; it had been a few years, but he had spent almost a month on Bakura once. Granted, that was among the Human population, in the higher sections of the curved skyscrapers. But he had a decent working knowledge of the planet’s native people, too. The matching patterns were significant. Cassian tapped his fingers irritably on the console before keying the earpiece.

  
“Markings indicate they are married,” he told his teammates. “Kurtzen culture puts a lot of emphasis on personal connections and bonds. That’s probably another good reason Mission Planning set you up with married identities. It makes you seem more trustworthy to them. You two will need to play up your - ” he couldn’t quite stop the hitch in his breathing that made him pause just a millisecond too long before he finished with, “relationship.”

  
“Oh, good,” Bodhi muttered in his ear.

  
Jyn didn’t respond, but she stuck her hand out to the side towards Bodhi, who regarded it blankly for a moment before yanking his hand from his pocket and taking it.

  
Cassian stifled a groan – they were holding their hands tightly between them, and it looked less like a married couple and more like two children ordered to hold hands to stay together in the market. Well, with luck, these Kurtzen were not terribly familiar with Human body language. It wasn’t a big hope, given how much of Kishh’daar was Human. But it was something.

  
There wasn’t a whole lot he could do about it if he was wrong, anyway.

  
“Trisrin and Ysolle,” he reminded his team through the earpiece. “She’s a machinist foreman in the largest repulsor coil factory on the planet. He works in the administration division at the company headquarters.”

  
“We know,” Jyn said shortly.

  
“Um, but thanks,” Bodhi added, glancing at Jyn and then up at the nearest security camera.  It wasn’t the one Cassian was hooked into, so it just made Bodhi look a bit paranoid, but he appreciated the gesture anyway. Jyn kept her eyes straight ahead and her hand tight around Bodhi’s, directing him back towards the waiting Kurtzen without comment.

  
He had no one to blame but himself, Cassian thought with a heavy sense of resignation. He had practically called her incompetent when they left earlier. He had been snappish and distant the whole way here. He had skipped three physical therapy sessions in a row. Hells, he’d almost been caught and sold to the Empire on Bakura five years ago. Just a long series of mistakes, stretching back through the years of his life.

  
“How’s she cutting?” The female Kurtzen greeted Jyn and Bodhi as they drew close, her gravelly voice low but distinct in the earpiece.

  
“Well enough,” Jyn replied coolly. The male Kurtzen nodded to Bodhi, who nodded back.  
And then they all stared at one another.

“Bodhi,” Cassian murmured. “You have to sit first. You’re Jyn’s - ” again the involuntary pause, damn it, this should not bother him like this. “spouse.”

  
Bodhi sat down, a little too fast. Jyn, reaching to push his chair in as was considered polite, stumbled slightly as he pushed himself in a fraction of a second before she could touch the backing. She recovered quickly, slipping into her own chair as if nothing unusual had happened.

  
Cassian realized he was tapping his fingers against the console again, and stopped.

  
The female nodded to a large steaming plate of yellow and green in the center of the table. Four small plates sat around it, and four spoons were buried in the sides of the dish. “Bobotie?”

  
“Local food is safe for Human consumption,” Cassian murmured. “It’s a gesture of respect and trust to eat with them.”

  
Bodhi reached for the nearest spoon. Jyn didn’t move. Bodhi hesitated, holding the handle of the spoon. Jyn’s expression remained stony, but she grabbed one of the small plates and shoved it toward him.  
The female’s dark eyes stayed on Jyn, although the male offered Bodhi a slow dip of his head, the Kurtzen equivalent of a smile.

  
“Right,” Jyn said bluntly. She leaned back in her chair, setting one hand deliberately below the table top and the other flat on top of it. “You know who we are. We know who you are. Let’s work a deal.”

  
Tisrin the Kurtzen female cocked her head to the side and flicked a thin tongue over her scaled lips. “Yes,” she said thoughtfully, her dark eyes narrowed as she slowly folded her large hands on the table across from Jyn. Her thick black claws gleamed in the sunlight. “Suppose we do.”

  
“Hello,” her spouse Ysolle said to Bodhi, his blue shoulder scraping against Tisrin’s as he waved shyly. “Nice to meet you. So. Er. How long have you been bonded?”

  
“Awhile,” Jyn said flatly, at the same time that Bodhi grinned and said, “Oh, not long.”

  
In the cockpit, Cassian leaned his head back against the chair, and allowed himself a brief, but intense, flare of irritation against his spinal implants, Draven, and the universe in general.  
 

* * *

  
“I read her right.” Jyn crossed her arms and leaned against the bulkhead of the cargo bay, glaring at him defiantly. “She’s tough, respects tough, doesn’t like to fuck around, prefers to get to the point.”

  
Cassian mirrored her on the other side of the bay, though he fought to keep his posture less defensive and more relaxed. Not an easy task – the long hours of sitting in the cockpit had tightened his whole spine. Bodhi sat between them both on top of an empty crate, a tiny resonator tool hooked to his metal hand, running diagnostics on the prosthetic with his organic fingers. He had his head bent, as if his attention was wholly absorbed by the little read out screen on the resonator. The slump of his shoulders told Cassian that he was definitely feeling guilty about the meeting.

  
The Kurtzen had spoken with Bodhi and Jyn for roughly half an hour, although Cassian had noted that Trisran focused mainly on Jyn, and Ysolle talked exclusively to Bodhi. He might have marked that down to cultural conditioning – the Kurtzen didn’t divide things by gender lines so much as by dominance roles within relationships, and both Jyn and Trisran were clearly the more aggressive of their respective pairs. But the contacts had also spent a lot of time throwing each other significant looks, and Cassian couldn’t confirm but he was reasonably confident they had been holding hands under the table, and possibly tapping messages to one another.

  
“You read her correctly,” Cassian said quietly. Instead of looking mollified, Jyn’s expression darkened.

  
“Yeah. I did.”

  
“It’s not a failed operation, right?” Bodhi unclipped the resonator from one joint bolt and attached it to another. “They said they’d meet us tomorrow with more information. Maybe, um, maybe they just didn’t, didn’t bring everything this first time? In case we were, you know…” he gestured aimlessly with his organic hand, still not looking up.

  
“Possible,” Cassian said, shifting his weight subtly to try and ease some of the strain in his lower back. That wasn’t the real reason the Kurtzen had backed off, and they all knew it. As the meeting had gone on, the Kurtzen had gotten increasingly cagier and standoffish, until finally Trisran had announced they had to return to work, and they would meet the next day for follow on talks. Jyn had seemed about to protest, but Cassian told her to let it go, and recalled them both to the ship. Bodhi had made a few attempts to chat with her on the way back, but she had been silent the whole way. His fault, Cassian knew. A little was her frustration with the op, sure, but mostly it was his fault.

  
He shifted again, trying to put all his weight on his left foot without appearing to do so (it didn’t feel any less painful than putting all his weight on his right foot, but he had to at least try).

  
Jyn’s glower grew even more pronounced. “You haven’t stretched,” she said, jerking her chin at him.

  
Bodhi lifted his head. “Oh, hey,” he said with mild surprise. “She’s right. You’re supposed to do that twice a day.” He pointed the tip of the resonator at him. “The implants need, need to settle properly in the muscles.”

  
“I’ll stretch later,” Cassian started, “When we’ve had a chance to - ”

  
“Now,” Jyn cut him off. “Most of your stuff needs a second person.” She gestured at herself, and then made an abrupt sort of follow-on gesture towards Bodhi, as if it occurred to her a moment too late that Cassian might prefer him instead.

  
He sighed. The stretches were…not a good time, but the therapists had made a lot of noise about the importance of them. He wouldn’t feel better tonight, probably, but eventually…fuck, eventually, if he was lucky. If he lived that long.

  
Cassian leveraged himself painfully off the wall and pulled down the thin mat that Jyn had brought onboard after he had attempted to leave it behind (smirking at him when he saw it, you forgot something, Captain, and Cassian had almost laughed because of course she would catch him out like that). He rolled the mat out and stiffly lowered himself to his knees.

  
The cargo bay lapsed into silence as Bodhi tinkered with his hand, Jyn toyed with her necklace absently, and Cassian sat on the mat and ran through a series of careful stretches, sticking to the ones that he could do himself, for the moment. It didn’t hurt, precisely; his muscles seemed to creak and then reluctantly lengthen under his skin, leaving an almost-pleasant ache behind. Eventually he reached the stretches where he was supposed to need a partner, although he’d done them once or twice without. Far less effective on his own, but still worth doing. Hopefully worth doing. Cassian sat on the mat and carefully stretched his legs out in front of him, and then reached for his toes. He leaned a little into the stretch, felt a twinge along his ribs, and sat back up.

  
“Further,” Jyn said from behind him, and then her hands were on his shoulder blades. “Thirty seconds each, all the way down.”

  
“Could have sworn it was twenty seconds,” Cassian said dryly, trying not to let the relief show in his face as he felt her warmth seep through his shirt.

  
“Thirty,” she told him firmly, and leaned against his shoulder blades. Cassian let her push him a little further than he could force himself before. Her weight removed the need for him to tense up his sides and hurt his ribs this time, so he could almost reach his ankles this time. He gasped a little as his muscles stretched like taffy, pulling some of the tension from the chair and the afternoon and hours of watching Jyn and Bodhi walk through a potentially hostile planet with no way to get to them if they got in trouble.

  
“Better,” Jyn murmured, and let him up. He waited a solid thirty seconds upright, and then took a deep breath.

  
“Again?”

  
She braced her hands on his back; he could feel her callouses scrape lightly through the material. She had taken off her gloves. “Again.”

  
This time when her weight pressed gently but relentlessly down on his back, Cassian felt something – a knot, perhaps – give in his lower back, and he groaned low in his throat before he could swallow it back.

  
“Breathe,” Jyn murmured into his ear, and then took a deliberate breath in. Cassian closed his eyes and willed his muscles to relax under her touch, matching his breathing to her own. In, two, three, four, out, two, three, four, mierda, that felt so much better, his back elongating under her weight and heat and -

  
“I really thought,” Bodhi said suddenly from his crate a few paces away, “that we had that in the, in the bag. I mean, when we first got there. Ysolle seemed really, um, nice. Good food, too.”

  
Jyn let Cassian sit back up, and he could feel her settling back to her knees just behind him. For the first time all day, she seemed at ease around him. Cassian considered his next words very carefully.

  
“Kurtzen consider a person’s connections to be indicative of who they are,” he finally said. “As a person.”

  
Behind him, he heard Jyn sigh. It was a tiny sound, barely more than a shift of the air, but she was close enough (he was listening hard enough) that he caught it. The little sound told him she understood what he was getting at, and he felt another painful knot release, this one in his stomach. She didn’t seem irritated at him for pointing it out. He risked turning to peer over his shoulder at her, catching her eye. She flicked an eyebrow at him, then shook her head and dropped her gaze to his back, rising on her knees and setting her palms against him.

  
“Again,” she said quietly, and Cassian let her push him down once more.

  
“So…” Bodhi pulled the resonator free from his mechanical wrist and carefully wrapped the cord up. “I guess…they got shy with us because they picked, picked up on how we weren’t really, ah,” he ran his hand through his hair, tugging on the tail at the nape of his neck. “We weren’t really selling the ‘married’ bit, were we?”

  
Cassian reached for his feet again, and with his face hidden in his arms, allowed himself a moment to enjoy Jyn leaning on his back. He grunted, intending it to sound like an affirmative to Bodhi’s comment, though it came out sounding a little…less focused.

  
“I’ve never tried to play the Double,” Jyn said over his head, a slight edge in her voice again. This time, however, he could hear it for what it was; not angry, but embarrassed. Uncertain.

  
“It’s fine,” he said, or tried to, his lungs a little compressed and his attention divided by the low ache in his back.

  
“No,” Jyn replied, letting him up again. “It’s not.”

  
She settled on her knees again, and this time Cassian pushed himself around, leaning back against the nearby wall and pulling one leg up to his chest. He propped his elbow on his knee and considered her for a moment. Jyn sat back on her heels, her palms flat against her thighs, and returned the scrutiny, her chin raised in challenge, a glimmer of fire in her eyes that told him to proceed with caution.  
Cassian’s heart skipped in his chest. He loved it when she looked at him like that (he could admit that, in the privacy of his head, it was safe to think it, even if he wasn’t sure it was safe to…anyway).

  
Cassian ran his tongue over his suddenly dry lips (Jyn’s eyes dropped to his mouth, back up, and his heart definitely sped up, just a little). He turned and looked at Bodhi, who was watching them both from the corner of his eye, pretending to still be fiddling with his wrist. Cassian gestured to him, and Bodhi hesitated, making a face Cassian couldn’t quite interpret. But his friend hopped off the crate and walked over, dropping to the floor to join the other two. To Cassian’s amusement, Bodhi sat down on the edge of the mat and crossed his legs, folding his hands together neatly in his lap. It looked like a cross between Chirrut’s favorite meditation pose, and a schoolboy sitting for a lecture.

Cassian tilted his head back against the bulkhead. “Remember the chiffa peppers? Last week, in the forward galley.”

  
Bodhi snorted, and Jyn’s lip twitched at the corner.

  
“Oh, yeah,” Bodhi rubbed his nose a little sheepishly. “I mean, hard to forget that, right? The way that poor Shistavanen kept sneezing?”

  
“And that guy with the jaffa fruit,” Jyn tucked a strand of hair primly behind her ear, but Cassian could see that she was using the motion mostly to hide her face. “Couldn’t get that smell out of my nose for hours.”

  
“Kay made me clean the jaffa and pepper mix out of his air compressor intake,” Cassian told Bodhi. “And _someone_ was supposed to help,” he shot Jyn a significant look, “but bailed on me.”

  
Jyn cleared her throat. “Not my fault,” she said, but the humor in her smile grew a little brighter. “He commed me after I was already randomly assigned a recruit training.”

  
Bodhi reached over and prodded her shoulder. “You mean, “volunteered for a recruit training.””

  
Jyn swatted gently at his hand. “ _Randomly assigned.”_

  
“Technically,” Cassian said, “we could say that it was all Baze's fault.”

  
“Oh, yeah,” Bodhi laughed, “let’s, um, let’s blame it on him before he shows up and finds out.”

  
Jyn shook her head. “He never would have gotten into that argument if we hadn’t…” she gestured between herself and Bodhi, who grimaced through his laughter and poked at her shoulder again.

  
“Maybe not, but I’m not going to tell him.”  
Jyn grabbed his wrists and mock-scowled at him.

  
Cassian raised his finger and pointed at Bodhi, then Jyn. “There,” he said quietly.

  
Both of them paused, looking back at him with identical uncertain expressions.

  
Cassian dropped his finger, and smiled faintly at them. “Right there, how you’re talking. And,” he nodded to their hands, Jyn’s wrapped around Bodhi’s, “how you’re moving together.”

  
They broke apart, Jyn looking a little guilty, but Bodhi merely thoughtful.

  
“It’s like…” he wrinkled his nose, turned to face Jyn. “An in-joke,” he said at last.

  
“We are sort of pulling a con,” Jyn agreed, slowly, feeling her way through her answer. “They don’t know that we’re just playing the game.”

  
“It’s kind of funny,” Bodhi tapped his knee. “I mean, pretending like, like we’re married and all.” He coughed, and then his smile turned a bit sly. “So they wouldn’t know I was lying if I called, called you my, uh, honeybear.”

  
Jyn blinked at him. “What.”

  
Cassian smiled, folded his arms across his middle, and relaxed back against the wall.

  
“You prefer sugar-woogums?” Bodhi teased. “Or, uh, we could always - hey, stop it! Always go with something, um, classic like – Jyn! Not the hair! Classic like sweetheart, or dearest one – _Jyn!”_ Bodhi tumbled backwards, arms up defensively as he tried to avoid Jyn’s pinching fingers. “Ow!”

  
“Call me your dearest anything,” Jyn threatened, though she was obviously fighting a grin, “and see what happens, Rook.”

  
“Tomorrow,” Cassian said, watching them both through half-shut eyes, still leaning back against the bulkhead, “when you go for the meet. Remember the chiffa peppers.”

  
“And the jaffa fruit,” Bodhi said, sitting back up. Then his grin turned sly again, although this time Cassian couldn’t guess why. “If I remem, remember right, Cassian,” he said far too casually to actually be casual. “Someone dumped a lot of it on your shirt, didn’t they? You were pretty drenched.”

  
Jyn’s glower suddenly seemed to take on a real edge again, although for once on this mission, it was not directed at Cassian.

“Yes,” he agreed carefully, watching her. “I was.”

  
“Your whole shirt was stuck to you, and you didn’t even have a jacket. Terrible, really.” Bodhi pursed his lips thoughtfully. He wasn’t half-bad at acting, Cassian mused, when he wasn’t crushed under the weight of his still-jittery nerves. “That material seemed surprisingly thin, once it got wet. Didn’t it, Jyn?”

  
“Good night,” Jyn replied, and to Cassian’s surprise, she got up from the floor and marched out of the cargo bay without a backward glance.

  
Bodhi met Cassian’s questioning look with a grin and a shrug. “Guess she’s tired,” the pilot offered.

  
“Right,” Cassian frowned at him, but Bodhi was already immune to both Cassian and Jyn’s frowns, so he simply shrugged again and clambered to his feet. “Um, thanks, by the way,” he said, faltering a little now that the joke was over. He held out his hand, and Cassian hauled himself slowly to his feet with Bodhi’s help. “For the, I mean, the advice? The...help?”

  
Cassian rolled his shoulders carefully, testing the range of motion. Not as good as it could be, not as bad as it was. His back still felt oddly warm, particularly around his shoulder blades. “Anytime.”  
 

* * *

  
“And then the tray went flying through the air,” Bodhi arced his hand over the table, mimicking the trajectory, “And here I am, watching it in, uh, in slow motion as it just - ” He smacked his hand into the table, and Ysolle made a grating noise that typically signaled laughter in a Kurtzen.

  
“All over your friend?”

  
“Splash!” Bodhi spread both his hands wide open over the table in what Cassian had to admit was a reasonable visual of how the tray of jaffa jelly fruit had hit him square in the chest. Ysolle grated another laugh, and at his side even Trisran cocked her head at an amused angle.

  
“And the worst part of it was - ” Bodhi sighed, shaking his head.

  
“It was warm,” Jyn finished, leaning so far back in her chair she was almost tipping the front legs off the floor. Bodhi turned his grin to her, and her mouth curved into a half smile.

  
“Oh, no, warm jaffa fruit smells awful,” Ysolle shook his head. “Your poor friend.”

  
“Oh, he was alright.” Bodhi turned to Jyn again, and Cassian’s hijacked camera angle was just good enough to catch the wink he gave her. “Had to take a long shower, but no harm done.”

  
“And he forgave you?” Ysolle turned to Jyn. “For throwing the tray at him?”

  
“I didn’t throw it,” Jyn said shortly, then caught herself and turned the expression aggrieved rather than aggressive. “Someone made me trip,” she reached over and pinched Bodhi’s ribs. He squirmed, laughed, and caught her hand, pinning it to the table top. Or rather, Jyn allowed him to pin her hand to the table top, and both of them kept it there between them. From one of his cameras, Cassian could see Trisran looking down at their fingers, her dark eyes much less guarded than yesterday.

  
So it was going well. That was good. He was proud of them. He really was. They were doing well. Very good. Great.

  
“Hey don’t, don’t look at me,” Bodhi chuckled in the earpiece. “If it weren’t for the mouse, I never would have eaten that chiffa pepper.”

  
Jyn laughed. Softly, just a throaty chuckle that the mike barely picked up, but it seemed to reverberate in Cassian’s ear all the same. For a stupid, pointless moment, he found himself trying to remember the last time he had made her laugh, even a swallowed-back laugh like this.

  
Irrelevant. Focus on the operation. The Kurtzen were primed now, there were no Imperial patrols in this part of the city for another two hours, and the cameras showed that all the tables around his team and the contacts were clear.

  
Cassian took a deep breath and made his shoulders drop, his jaw relax. He keyed the mic, and murmured, “Time to push.”

  
Bodhi and Jyn glanced at one another, and even through the camera lens and several kilometers of distance, Cassian could see the open affection and agreement between them.

  
So this, he thought idly, is what jealousy felt like.

  
Jyn kept her hand folded in Bodhi’s, but she angled her body a little more towards Trisran. “So,” she said. “It’s almost time for us to leave.”

  
“Not that this hasn’t been really fun,” Bodhi interrupted, and nodded to the half-empty plate in the middle of the table. “And we really appreciate your hospitality. That bobotie is amazing.”

  
Ysolle dipped his head in a lizard smile. “Thanks, Catta! It’s Trisran’s favorite. I make it at home too, if you want the recipe.”

  
“Hey, that would be, be pretty great, actually,” Bodhi leaned forward eagerly, probably not even acting any more. Cassian tried to recall if he’d eaten the dish when he was here last, but found himself drawing a blank. He knew what it was, of course, every ingredient in it, and the various cultural significances it had on different parts of Bakura. But he couldn’t remember if he’d ever tasted it.

  
“Here, let me get my datapad,” Ysolle fumbled at his belt, and Trisran leaned forward towards Jyn, nudging her spouse with her elbow as she did.

  
“We can give you a few recipes,” she said carefully. “And some locations you can get the best ingredients.”

  
Ysolle glanced up at her, paused, and then seemed to startle. “Oh, uh, yes, of course.”

  
Bodhi looked at Jyn, who nodded slowly without breaking eye contact with Trisran.

  
“That would be great,” Bodhi said again, firmly.

  
Cassian watched as the big blue lizard and his pilot friend shuffled their chairs close together and bent over two datapads, transferring “recipes” from Ysolle’s to Bodhi’s. (In fairness, there was a good chance Ysolle actually would give Bodhi at least one real recipe. That was good; it always helped to add elements of truth to cover stories.) Next to them, both the females watched with quiet intensity, their attention clearly split between each other, and their male counterparts.  
Cassian drummed his fingers on his chair arm, uncertain why the word counterpart left such a stale taste in his mouth. Jyn was his partner, true, but she had other people in her life. Come to think of it, so did he. The same people, even. There was just no reason for the nonsense going on in the back of his head.

  
Restlessness, he decided. Restlessness, a quiet fear that he wouldn’t recover quickly enough from his Scarif injuries, worry about two of the most important people in his life technically committing treason out in the middle of enemy territory, and a low grade back ache. That’s what was wrong with him.

  
Bodhi looked up from the datapad and grinned at Jyn. She smiled back, subdued, but warm.

  
And jealousy, Cassian told himself shortly, because a good spy didn’t lie to himself. Not if he wanted to remain a living spy, anyway. Yes, alright, he was jealous of them both, so easily comfortable with one another, so obviously enjoying each other’s company. Cassian didn’t have a lot of experience with jealousy; for a long time he had operated solely with Kay, and Kay didn’t like other people much, as a general rule.

  
“These look great, Ysolle,” Bodhi said a little too loudly in Cassian’s ear, scooting his chair back around to sit close to Jyn again. “I can’t wait to make them.” He nudged Jyn’s side with his elbow. “We can share them with our friends, right, sweetie?”

  
Jyn’s mouth flattened, and her eyes narrowed. Cassian stilled, watching the Kurtzen watch her.

  
“I can’t wait,” she said in a dangerously sweet voice, “Sugarpie.”

  
Bodhi, brave, reckless man that he was, flung his arm over Jyn’s shoulders and made a ridiculously soppy face. “Well, guess we better get on the road, snookums.”

  
“Right, honeybunch,” Jyn replied dryly. “Got to beat the traffic.”

  
Ysolle looked from Trisran to Jyn and Bodhi. “Do all Humans call each other food names?”

  
Bodhi and Jyn caught each other’s gazes – Cassian couldn’t quite read whatever passed between them, but it looked like two friends sharing an old joke - and then Bodhi cracked up, and Jyn smirked. “No, we’re, um, we’re just special,” Bodhi said, and coughed into his elbow to calm himself down.

  
“You have such a wonderful energy together,” Ysolle said, his head bobbing slightly in pleased approval. “I can see why you married.”

  
That made Bodhi crack up again (although Cassian doubted the Kurtzen had any idea why), and Jyn bit her lip and then nodded solemnly.

  
“A pleasure to meet you,” Trisran said, rising to her considerable height. “Good luck with your cooking.”

  
“Yeah,” Jyn stood too, several centimeters shorter and somehow no less intimidating. “Same. Be careful out there.”

  
“Bye, Siv!” Ysolle waved at them, leaning against his spouse’s shoulder as the Humans walked away. “Bye, Catta! May we share a meal again someday!”

  
Bodhi waved back over his shoulder, and then easily grabbed Jyn’s outstretched hand, swinging their linked fingers between them cheerfully as they left the _mzoli_ patio and strolled out into the busy street.

  
Distance, Cassian decided, turning away from the bright screens a moment to rest his eyes and stretch his tight shoulders. He just needed a little distance from…everything. A few hours maybe, to get his head back on straight and get over this ridiculous, pointless, unfounded…he just needed a little distance.

* * *

The galley of the light freighter was cramped, small enough that Cassian could stand in the middle and touch both sides at once, and every time he turned around, he knocked his elbow or his knee against the chipped cupboards or the narrow table bolted to the back wall. Cassian fumbled through making a pot of hot tea without bruising himself up too much, making sure the get the red mix as strong as Jyn typically liked and digging out the lemon flavoring Bodhi preferred in his. His hands felt strangely detached from the rest of him, all his joints screwed a little too tight, and his back, of course, ached like a bitch. But the tea smelled right, anyway, by the time Jyn and Bodhi walked onto the ship.

  
“All hail, um, the conquering heroes,” Bodhi said from the ramp, and then they both immediately squeezed into the galley with him. Bodhi slid onto the bench at the table and Jyn positioned herself on the other end of the space, taking the mug he offered her with a small smile of gratitude.

  
Cassian tried to return the look, but he was just…so tired, suddenly. It made it hard to force his face into anything other than the comforting neutrality he wore around the base. “Well done,” he said, and turned to accept the datapad from Bodhi. “I can’t believe how smoothly that went.”

  
Behind him, Jyn shifted her weight, and then stilled.

  
“That was much, much better than yesterday,” Bodhi took his own mug and squeezed a huge dollop of lemon juice into it. “You were right, Cassian. About the, um, the joke thing. The best part was how, I, uh, I think Trisran and Ysolle would have laughed too. If they knew. Maybe. Anyway, uh, that was really helpful, Cassian. Cheers.” He lifted his mug in a salute, and took a long draught from it.

  
“I try,” Cassian murmured, and flipped the datapad open. Maps, starship codes, manifests for dozens of cargo ships, all originating from the Bakura repulsor coil factories, and best of all, a series of official permits authorizing the holder to transport Imperial goods for the next year at least. It was an operational triumph, what he held in his hands, and Cassian could already see the glee on some of the Mission Planning folks’ faces when they got this. It could change the war in the whole sector, and definitely would along the Shiritoku trade route. “Well done,” he said again, and really meant it.

  
“Thanks for the help,” Jyn said from the side. Cassian jerked his head up to look at her, but her face was as unreadable as her tone. Whether she meant it honestly or as a sarcastic barb, he couldn’t tell. He looked away quickly, before she could read anything on his own face. She didn’t need to know that he had been talking himself out of a green haze for about an hour, reminding himself that they were both still his friends, however close they were outside of him. Reminding himself that he was still a useful asset to them, no matter how good they were without him.

  
“Yeah, that was great. Helped to have, have a, you know, cue in my head.” Bodhi tapped his ear and smiled at Cassian, and that, at least, seemed genuine. “Made me less worried I’d, um, screw it up.”

  
“That was my job,” Cassian told him, although he angled the comment at Jyn, too. If she was angry that he had stayed behind…well, he couldn’t entirely blame her, but that was his job on this operation.

  
… _was_ she angry he had stayed behind?

  
He needed distance. He was tangling himself up, even in his thoughts.

  
“I’ll get this sorted,” he said, tapping the datapad against his leg. “Write up the report so we’re good to go when we get back. I’ll be in the back if you -”

  
“It isn’t our fault,” Jyn interrupted him, her hands tight around her mug. Her gloves hid all of her hands except the tips of her fingers, which were white on the ceramic. “That you couldn’t come.”

  
“I know,” he said, and opened his mouth to say something else, although he forgot whatever it was promptly because Jyn wasn’t done.

  
“’S not my fault I never had to pretend to be married, or in – in love,” Jyn snapped, her voice catching slightly. “Not Bodhi’s fault he wasn’t trained to be a spy.”

  
Cassian frowned at her. “I know,” he said again.

  
She turned and snapped her mug to the magnetic hook nearest her and strode to the door. “Do you?”

  
She turned the corner and he listened to her boots echo against the metal plating, until she turned into the far cabin, and the door swished shut behind her.

  
“Well,” Bodhi said calmly. “You, um, bungled that one right up.”

  
Cassian blinked at him. “What?”

  
Bodhi gestured at the corridor down which Jyn had vanished, just barely avoiding sloshing his tea over his hand. “You’ve been kind of, you know,” he started, and then cleared his throat and stared into the mug when he caught Cassian’s expression. “Never mind. Just…are you…um,” Bodhi sighed, thunked the mug onto the table top, and met Cassian’s gaze squarely. “Okay?”

  
Cassian looked down at the datapad, although the words and numbers blurred as he stared. He opened his mouth to assure Bodhi that he was fine.

  
“You didn’t need me,” he heard himself say, and snapped his mouth closed.

  
“Oh.” Bodhi paused, and then his voice turned from tentative to almost…irate. “ _Oh_.” And then he burst into a long stream of flowing words, an almost singsong cadence to it as he slapped a hand over his face. One of the Jedhan tongues, Cassian hazarded, and judging by his tone, the words were not particularly complimentary. At least one of them wasn’t, he was almost sure, because he had heard something that sounded particularly like that word when Jyn dropped a spanner on her foot a few weeks back.

  
“You’ve been teaching Jyn curse words from Jedha,” he said mildly when Bodhi at last reached the end of his tirade.

  
“We’ve been trading them,” Bodhi flapped a hand at him impatiently. “Cassian. _Cassian_. Are you, are you seriously pissed because you thought we didn’t, _gus ka andez,_ we didn’t need you?”

  
Cassian shrugged, although the motion twinged the muscles in his shoulders and back. “It’s good to have an Overhead,” he said. “But I’ve mostly operated without one, and it’s…fine. You two were - ”

  
“Were only so, you know, relaxed because we knew you, you had our back,” Bodhi uncovered his face and shook his head, taking another long drink from his mug. “I need caf,” he muttered into the mug. “Tea just isn’t, isn’t enough for this one.”

  
“I know,” Cassian said again, a broken record, just repeating himself over and over to no effect. It was a feeling he was well familiar with, although he’d been relatively free of it for…about six months. Since Scarif. Since Jyn – and Bodhi, Chirrut, Baze, rebooting Kay and finding his request for Jyn and Bodhi assigned to his team marked ‘Approved’ in his inbox. Since he woke up in the medbay to a crying, celebrating Alliance and the news the Death Star was gone.

  
“She thinks you’re pissed because, um, because you don’t trust her to handle it without you,” Bodhi told him matter of factly.

  
“I know.”

  
“So,” his friend threw his hands up in the air. “Why are you still here?”

  
Why _was_ he still here? It wouldn’t be hard to tell her, would it? At the least, tell her that he knew she was good, that she didn’t need him to fight the Empire, or survive, or do anything at all, not really. He’d just told Bodhi, hadn’t he? She didn’t need him. That was fine. He was still useful. He was decent backup, had a lot of contacts and experience. But she didn’t need him. If it bothered her to think that she did, he could correct her.

  
“Whatever you’re thinking right now,” Bodhi said flatly, pushing up from the table and edging a little awkwardly around Cassian to the cupboard where they stored the caf, “Stop it. I can, I can tell you’re getting it wrong.”

  
“Oh?” Cassian clipped the datapad to his belt and folded his arms, a little peeved at the implication that he was so easy to read.

  
Bodhi threw him a look over his shoulder as he pulled down the container with the powdered caf. “Are you mad because you think that, um, you being stuck back here is _your_ fault?”

  
Cassian caught himself gritting his teeth, and forced the muscles in his face to release the tension, trying not to snap as he answered. “Jyn’s been teaching you to interrogate people, too?”

Bodhi plugged in the caf pot, his shoulders hunched slightly.

Cassian wanted to slap himself. So much for not snapping. “Sorry.”

  
Bodhi shrugged, eyeing Cassian over his shoulder with a speculative look that immediately put him on his guard. “Jyn teaches me a lot of stuff,” he said slowly. “She’s, um, a really good friend.”

  
“I know,” Cassian repeated, broken record on repeat.

  
“We do spend a lot of time together,” Bodhi went on, and he was definitely trying to lead Cassian into something. Cassian pressed his lips together and waited. “Not as much, maybe, as you two, though,” Bodhi finished. He flipped the caf pot on, and the soft bubbling filled the small space.

  
“I haven’t kept track of your time,” Cassian said. It wasn’t entirely true, but Bodhi didn’t need to know that Cassian was technically in charge of monitoring the former-Imperial, at least for the first two months that the former Imperial pilot was on “probation” in the eyes of Rebel Intel. Cassian had been a little surprised Draven allowed him to sponsor Bodhi, given his recent insubordination, but a lot of things were different in a galaxy where the Death Star existed. Had existed.

  
Bodhi stared at him, and then he closed his eyes and let out another stream of flowing invective in his mother tongue. Cassian noted with distant interest that Bodhi never once seemed to stumble, the probable curses and insults rolling smoothly off his friend’s tongue without pause.

  
Bodhi stepped across the cramped galley and glowered up into Cassian’s face. He was about eight or nine centimeters shorter than Cassian, and the marks of torture and grief still made his features seem worryingly fragile at times, but right at this moment he seemed somehow bigger and more dangerous than usual. Bodhi was not confrontational at all, and the abrupt change was startling to say the least. Cassian raised his eyebrows but didn’t lean back.

  
“Cassian,” Bodhi said in a sharp tone, “if you break whatever thing you’ve got going with Jyn because you think she wants me instead,” he shook his head, rolling his eyes, “if you use me as an excuse to break things between you two, I will, I will,” he threw up his hands. “I will hit you with a shovel.”

  
“Thing I’ve got going with Jyn,” Cassian repeated slowly.

  
“Don’t even deny it,” Bodhi growled at him. “I’m not, not a fancy spy with fancy training, but I’m not, you know, _blind._ ” He paused, his angry expression turning concerned for a second. “Don’t tell Chirrut I said that.”

  
Cassian shook his head. Something small and bright flickered in his chest, growing with every word Bodhi said, but he kept his hands cupped tight around it, because he might be wrong, he might be taking this all out of context, he might, he might -

  
“Right,” the anger snapped back onto Bodhi’s face. “Look, you and Jyn are partners. Anyone who spends, like, ten minutes with the two of you knows that. Jyn introduces herself as that to the other Intel guys. Force sake, Cassian, _you_ introduce yourself like that in, in briefings and stuff. You should get, you know, business cards made up. Jyn’s my friend, maybe the best one I’ve got, got left.” He cleared his throat, and the flickering brightness in Cassian’s chest wavered a little at the expression on Bodhi’s face. But then the pilot shook himself. “But you’re her partner. End of story. So,” he stepped back as far as the galley would allow, and pointed at the door. “Go...go be that.”

  
The caf pot pinged, the scent of cheap caf wafting through the galley. Cassian followed Bodhi’s pointing finger to the corridor, and then back to his friend. The light in his chest flared a little, and he swallowed hard to keep it under control. “Are you sure she doesn’t want you instead,” he said in a low tone, expression neutral, and Bodhi rolled his eyes but before he could yell again, Cassian added, “honeybunch?”

  
Bodhi opened his mouth, shut it, glowering. “Out,” he ordered, pointing to the corridor again.

  
Cassian pushed himself off the counter and walked into the corridor, pausing at the door. “Thank you,” he said softly, not quite able to turn around and look back.

  
Behind him, he could hear the caf pouring into a mug, all the way to the top. “Yes, yes,” Bodhi said with resigned exasperation. “Go on, go, let a man drink his, his caf in peace.”

  
The light was out under Jyn’s door, but he could hear the faint sound of her boots tapping on the metal floor, pacing back and forth inside her chosen cell. If he left her in there, she would pace until she couldn’t stand it anymore, and would come out looking for something to hit. Good odds she would aim for the thick insulation in the engine room, a poor man’s punching bag on freighter’s like this. There was a chance she still would want to work some excess frustration out on the padding regardless of how well he handled this conversation.

  
There was a chance she wouldn’t. If he was careful. If he was brave.

  
Cassian pressed his hand against the bulkhead by her door for a moment and took a slow breath, rolling his shoulders down to push some of the tension out of them. The memory ambushed him, her hands on his back, pushing him down, stretching out the pain and making his whole body feel light and loose again. Cassian closed his eyes. Jyn tended to have that effect on his life, pushing him further than he thought he could go, in directions he was afraid would hurt him. And every time, she left him better than she found him. Better than he thought he could be.

  
They all did, Kay and Bodhi and the Guardians, but it was Jyn who walked in synch at his side, Jyn who would understood him when he couldn’t speak.

  
Jyn, who was his partner.

  
Cassian straightened, took another long, slow breath, and knocked on the door.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Bakura's primary industry was the manufacture of repulsorlift coils...General disapproval of droids, combined with high tariffs, led to a nearly total absence of droids on Bakura; droid technology was prohibited, and the possession of droids was only allowed with official permission and several permits." - [Wookieepedia entry on Bakura](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bakura/Legends)
> 
> "The Kurtzen were a pale, hairless, humanoid species from the planet Bakura. They were the only sentients native to the world; few in number, they became a minority when Human settlers arrived in 150 BBY...Kurtzen religious beliefs centered on a universal life force that could be channeled via clothing and personal effects called totems or life trinkets...  
> Kurtzen families were close, and Kurtzen celebrated when good things happened to kin." - [wookieepedia entry on Kurtzen](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kurtzen)
> 
> [Bobotie](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobotie) is a pretty tasty South African dish, and I figured a culture so oriented around relationships and families and so on would put emphasis on a meal you ate from a communal plate.
> 
> [Mzoli](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mzoli%27s) is the name of a restaurant in Cape Town, South Africa, but in this case I stole the word and made it a general term for cantina/café.
> 
> Mike/mic – Just a professional note, because I waffled on how to write this, but technically the abbreviation of microphone is “mic,” but in written form this has always looked like “mick” to me, not “mike.” So. It’s not that I don’t know how to spell “mic.” I just don’t like it.
> 
>  _gus ka andez_ \- a slight warping of an Urdu expletive. In this case, translates directly as “shit in the desert,” (in Jedhan, not Urdu), but Bodhi is using it like “goddamnit.” Look, he loves his friends, but they can be kind of frustrating.


	7. frustration, fire, and fungus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For @callioope, who prompted “I dunno? Just set it on fire, I guess.” I changed the tone, but the sentiment remains the same!

“Well,” Cassian said, following Jyn’s pointing finger to the bright red fungus that grew proudly at the forefront of the exhibit. “It certainly is…phallic.”

“Also a powerful laxative in most carbon-based species,” Jyn smirked at him, eyeing the irregular patch of inappropriate mushrooms over the steel guardrail. A group of children drifted between where she and Cassian leaned against the opposing rail, watching the crowds of the Chandrila Botanical Center surge around them peacefully. “Called Grika’s Handle, in polite society.” She winked at him, but he didn’t ask what it was called in impolite society, so she shrugged and went on. “Dries out nicely. Popular with the Mon Cala.” Mon Cala didn’t suffer the same unfortunate affects as most others, and considered them a huge delicacy. Maybe she could snag a handful for Ackbar. She kind of owed him one, after he confirmed her rank in the Alliance, announcing loudly and to the surrounding Council that _if a hero like Raddus was willing to follow her into battle, then so shall I!_

The Senators had all eyed her with various levels of uncertainty, Draven had sighed in a decidedly grumpy way, and Cassian had looked at her with a kind of pride that still made her feel shivery and warm, even months later.

Yeah, she could snag a few Grika’s Handle while they were here. Chandrila was wealthy, and these gardens were vast. They could spare some shrooms.

Of course, she could keep one or two for her own purposes. Solo had stolen her sweetroll off her plate a few days ago, and she wasn’t about to let _that_ fly without an appropriate response.

Cassian studied her from the corner of his eye, most of his attention on the crowds around them. He waited until the chattering kids shuffled past them, pointing towards a nearby flower bed full of sweet-smelling roses, and then he nudged her arm with his elbow. “We’re not here to steal mushrooms.”

“Target of opportunity” she said in a reasonable tone, tapping her thigh. “Got a whole empty pouch, too.”

He flicked an eyebrow at her. “You can’t poison Solo with a mushroom.” His mouth didn’t quite curve up, but some of the tension in his face relaxed.

“Not with a mushroom,” Jyn nodded briskly, encouraged by the faint humor shining through the frustration she could read in his fake relaxed pose. “Got it.”

“That’s not what - ”

“She’s late,” Jyn interrupted, her face perfectly neutral.

Cassian rolled his eyes, and let it go. “Another hour.” He twisted his arm around to rub distractedly at his lower back. “Then we’ll call it.” He caught her looking and dropped his hand casually, which really only served to aggravate her more. It was one thing to know his Scarif injuries were acting up, the muscles around his spinal implants aching or his shoulders feeling stiff even a year later.

It was another thing entirely to know he was trying to hide it from her.

Jyn glanced around the botanical gardens, but the nearest people to them were a small family of Humans lifting their kids up to look at the low-hanging flowering lichen on a Cyrillian Rainbow tree. The civilians were enraptured by the multi-colored display, and the rest of the crowd was far away enough, and noisy enough, for the risk. So she sidled closer to Cassian’s shoulder and leaned against him, taking care not to put any real pressure on him. If his spine was aching again, she didn’t want to aggravate the pain. “You can go back to the ship,” she said softly. “I’ve got this.”

He responded immediately, fast enough to tell her that he’d already been thinking it. “No.”

“It’s just a switch. You can start the departure process, get us out of here faster.”

Cassian stayed perfectly still, his eyes still tracking through the crowds restlessly, but his voice froze over. “No.”

Jyn glared at him. He was being unreasonable; this was as low stakes as a mission got, a simple pick up from a disaffected Imperial researcher willing to swap data on bioweapon research for a new identity and a ticket off Chandrila. The researcher appeared to be a model Imperial citizen, so there would be no one watching her for treason, and the location was relatively light on security. These public gardens were the kind of place that planets liked to show off in all their travel brochures, and the nearby pavilions were exactly the kind of place where government functions and high society events were held. No one wanted Stormtroopers mucking up the scenery, unless it was a military affair.

The point was, she could handle this, and he could go sit down and maybe take a mild painkiller or two. There was no need for him to hang out here getting stiffer and crankier by the minute.

Cassian glanced at her from the corner of his eye, still not moving (although whether from stubbornness or because it hurt for him to turn his head, she couldn’t tell). “ _No_ ,” he repeated, leaving no room for debate.

Jyn grit her teeth and straightened, putting a few centimeters of distance between them. Fine. He wanted to deal with back aches that would keep him up all night and the tension headache he would get because he stayed on his feet all day instead of doing the sensible thing? That was his call.

She felt him shift his weight as she moved away, a twitch of his arm as if he started to raise it and then stopped himself. She didn’t turn back to him, though, watching a nearby Human couple make soppy faces at one another as they passed, following signs for the Traditional Naboo Wedding Garden. They had their arms wound tight around one another, their heads bent close, the world entirely shut out from their joined space. Oblivious to everything but each other. She could stick her foot out and hook the nearest one’s ankle, and both would topple down.

In the very edge of her vision, she saw Cassian turn his head to track the absorbed couple until they disappeared around the far bend of the cobbled path.

They stood in silence for several more minutes, letting the crowd eddy and swirl around them. A few steps in the opposite direction from the oblivious couple, the marbled paths curved around a sharp corner. The signs labelled it as the path to the Tea Gardens, which she could just see through the tall trees of their current position, a beautifully curated space covered in beds of flowers and shrubs so fragrant that Jyn’s mouth watered a little even from this distance. Another branching path, just past Cassian, led into a lovely series of waterfall gardens, at the top of which stood one of the few guardhouses in the area. A guesthouse just full of Stormtroopers and Imperial officers assigned to the easy patrols of this area. Jyn caught herself leaning around Cassian to check the guardhouse, and deliberately stepped back. He was a little _too_ still as she peered around him, and didn’t move a muscle when she pulled away, either. She had probably insulted him, implying that she didn’t trust him enough to keep watch on his side.

A small, petty part of her wanted to do it again, drive home the point that he wasn’t at his best and maybe she would be safer without him. The urge died as quickly as it bloomed, though, because Jyn was never safer without him, and she knew it. She was just pissed off at him for…for…well, what? Being dedicated? Caring? Shit, she was being ridiculous. Too close to the subject, that was the problem. Every time he winced or moved stiffly, something in her flinched. Every stress line around his mouth felt like it was scratched out with a rusty blade across her own skin. She was just too emotionally involved to see clearly, and if she wasn’t careful, she would get them both in trouble. 

Jyn closed her eyes and took a long, slow breath, straightened away from the railing where they had been leaning. The move put another handspan of distance between them, removed any trace of his body heat from her senses. Her arm felt a little colder, but it was for the best. He didn’t need her getting waspish and nagging while he was focused on the job. She didn’t need to be fretting about his health when there was a guardhouse full of ‘troopers within her line of sight.

When she opened her eyes, Cassian was watching her with a shuttered expression. She decided not to try and pick it apart. Distance. A little distance was a good idea.

“If she’s not here in ten minutes,” she told him, proud of how professional and detached she sounded, “We’re out.”

Cassian nodded. His eyes dropped to her shoulder for some reason, perhaps marking the fact that she was now almost outside of his arm’s reach, and then flicked away. Dismissing the distance, she figured with a faint sinking sensation. Dismissing her attitude.

 _Or maybe,_ she reminded herself sternly _, he’s just taking your cue, and giving you both a little room to think._

She had no right to be angry with him. Sure, he snapped at her, but she had been unprofessional.

They stood in silence as the tourist crowd moved around them, the space between their arms suddenly a gulf as vast as the space between stars. The next seven minutes were not the most excruciating of Jyn’s life, but watching Cassian’s shoulders sit rigid and unmoving out of the corner of her eye, while carefully never looking up at his face in case he was watching her back, detached and disappointed in her – well, it wasn’t the worst she’d endured, but it was damn close.

At the eight minute mark, Cassian leveraged himself painfully off the rail. “We’re done,” he said sharply, and Jyn flinched before she could catch herself.

He saw it, of course, and his words turned a little rougher around the edges. “With this,” he added. “Waiting around, we’re…let’s go.”

She nodded and moved away from the rail and into the path, still watching the crowds because they were in the middle of an op, it was safer to keep her eyes on the crowds, not because she was afraid to turn around and meet his eyes. Safer to watch the crowd. Safer to keep her back to him until they were…somewhere else. Maybe somewhere she could hand him the painkillers and he couldn’t claim it was too dangerous to take them.

“Hey.” She could feel something warm hovering near her shoulder, his hand just shy of touching her. The skin on the back of her neck tightened, her breath caught in her lungs. Cassian stepped a little closer to her back, closer than was safe, out here. “Are you - is this – “

“Oh my stars, I’m so, _so_ sorry!” 

Cassian’s warmth vanished, and Jyn spun on her heels, her hand flying to her empty belt as the new voice spiked through her head and sent a flush of adrenaline burning through her veins. A woman was half-running towards them, her bulky coat pulled tight around her shoulders, her lipstick smudged slightly at one corner. Jyn eyed the small white birthmark on the woman’s neck, only just visible beneath the carefully groomed dark beard. This was her, then, the researcher they had been sent to meet. She looked like someone who normally was very well made up, but rumpled now with stress and barely-concealed fear. She looked, Jyn thought as she noted the overstuffed bag slung over the woman’s shoulder and the pale-knuckled way that the researcher clung to the strap, like a civilian refugee. Or rather, a civilian who was about to become one.

“I’m so sorry, I’m late, I know,” Doctor Marien Dupuis gasped as she skid to a halt before them. “I got pulled, I mean, delayed by - ” she swallowed, looked over her shoulder in the most obvious, attention drawing way possible, “Uh, hello, Analysts…Soren and, um, Nireen,” she fumbled through the coded phrase she had been instructed to give. “I’m Doctor Dupuis. We met at the…at the Conference last month, on, um, on Sullust.”

“We remember,” Jyn replied flatly, giving their half of the code. “The Cornudamae lecture.”

“Um, yes,” Dupuis stepped back from Jyn a little, her hands tight on the strap of her bag. “The Cornudamae lecture. That was...that was me. On Sullust.”

“Easy, Doctor Dupuis,” Cassian said, light and soothing, a voice he often used on distraught marks. The researcher reacted the way most of them did, the tense lines in her face smoothing slightly, a flicker of hope in her eyes as she looked up at him. Cassian smiled and held up his hands, “It’s fine, we weren’t waiting too long. Come on, let’s walk a little, and sit on that bench, okay? Breathe, Doctor, take your time. Everything’s okay.”

The researcher took a deep breath, straightening up and brushing a hand through her styled hair and beard, smiling back at him like he was her last solid point to stand in a turbulent world. Her smile faltered slightly when she glanced at Jyn, probably thrown by Jyn’s wary, uninviting expression. That happened a lot when they had an upset mark; Cassian soothed them and Jyn unnerved them. She stepped back and jerked her head towards the bench several more steps from the nearest security guard station, and made a point of looking away as the researcher walked past her, following Cassian.

Cassian led the woman to the bench and helped her settle her big bag on her lap, sitting down next to her so smoothly that no one could ever guess he ever had so much as a papercut, let alone multiple broken bones in his ribs and spine. There was room on the bench on Dupuis’ other side, but Jyn knew better than to crowd a mark that was already antsy. She would just undermine Cassian’s magic, and anyway, one of them needed to keep their eyes out for guards. So instead, she propped her hip against the rail and crossed her arms, giving Cassian and Dupuis some space.

“I’m glad you made it, Doctor,” Cassian said gently, and the researcher relaxed a little more under the calm he projected. “I know it wasn’t easy.”

In the back of Jyn’s head, pride warred with exasperation. He was good at this, very good, and alright, if he had gone back to the ship, Jyn would not be handling this distraught woman nearly as well. But that wasn’t the point. The point was – it was just that he thought –

He shifted on the bench as Dupuis clutched her bag tight in her lap and cleared her throat. The woman didn’t notice the brief wince that flashed over his face as he moved, but Jyn did.

Focus on the crowd, Jyn. Watch for threats. He knows what he’s doing.

“I should have left a long time ago,” Dupuis said suddenly, biting her lower lip. “But I kept telling myself, it’s just paranoia. I’m – “ she stopped abruptly, took another deep breath. “I thought it was just me being very sensitive to things. I didn’t…quite _integrate_ into the team here.” She gestured to her face, her expression turning into a peculiar combination of anger, uncertainty, and a stubborn sort of pride that raised her a few steps in Jyn’s estimation.

“The Empire has a poor track record with those who do not follow a very specific script,” Cassian agreed easily, and the researcher relaxed again, more than she had so far. “And we are not judging you for how long you stayed,” he went on. “We are just glad that you were willing to reach out to us before it was too late.”

“Yes, I – I had to.” Dupuis sighed. “The things I’ve found in the lab lately…someone has to do _something_. I can’t - I can’t stop it. But…”

“But you can get the message out, so others can act.” Cassian nodded. “Believe me, Doctor,” he smiled, this time a real smile that flashed the dimple on his cheek and sent a little shiver down Jyn’s spine that she hid carefully. “I know exactly how valuable that is.”

“Thank you,” Dupuis said, sounding a little stunned. “Thank you. For understanding.”

Yeah, it was definitely pride winning the battle in Jyn’s chest right now. He was just… _good_ at this. Good at a lot of things. Better than he ever seemed to understand. He deserved better, too, better than a life of pushing himself through pain and exhaustion every day.

If only she could make him understand that. If only she had the right words.

“We have your package,” Cassian told Dupuis, tapping the envelope hidden under his jacket. “Scandocs, credits, a ticket for a transport that leaves in three hours. There’s a small apartment and a job waiting for you under this identity, too.”

“Is it…um,” Dupuis shook her head. “Safe?”

“I know the person who put this together,” Cassian told her, and Jyn didn’t turn away from her study of the crowds, but she could feel the pressure of his eyes on her. “They are one of the best I’ve ever seen. I trust them with my own life, and I trust them with yours.”

Jyn realized that she was clenching her jaw, and forced it to relax. It was easy to believe him, when he sounded like that. It was easy to know that he had her back and trusted her to have his in turn, when he spoke of her with that particular note of admiration and honesty in his voice.

Maybe she was just overreacting, earlier.

“Oh gods,” Dupuis murmured, and to Jyn’s horror, she reached up and swiped her fingers carefully along her eyes, trying not to smudge her eyeliner and mostly failing. “I’m so, so sorry, I really am.”

Tension snapped through Jyn’s guts, her attention wrenched from the innocuous crowds to the woman crying on the bench.

“Doctor,” Cassian said, the gentleness evaporating into tight wires as he leaned closer to the researcher. “Why are you sorry?”

“The data,” she sniffled, still rubbing delicately at her eyes. “I had the data. I did! Please, please believe me, it’s here, I didn’t lie to you, it’s just…” She reached out and grabbed Cassian’s hand. He stayed very still, his eyes dark and unreadable. Jyn dug her fingers into her forearms and forced herself to turn away, to sweep the area for incoming ‘troopers or some other sign that the researcher had been followed. “That prig Golen, another researcher from my lab, oh gods, he’s a horrible little – he made my life hell here and when I left for lunch today, not for lunch, to come here but I said for lunch – he followed me and he started asking me all these questions about why my bag was so full and everything.” Dupuis sniffed loudly, her fingers still tight around Cassian’s, “and I panicked because if the ‘troopers heard, if they did a search or something, I thought – oh, I am so sorry!”

They needed to get out of here. Something had gone wrong, the data was a bust, and they were probably compromised. Jyn stood up from the railing, let her hand drift to the hidden knife in her thigh pouch. Cassian would get the message; he would stand up and they would get the hells out of here before -

“Doctor Dupuis,” Cassian said. “Where did you dump the data?”

\- or he would do that. Shit.

Jyn fidgeted, settling back on her heels. Cassian wasn’t going to leave without the information they came here to get. Wonderful. Of course, the odds that this was a trap just went up about fifty percent. Maybe more. She wished Kay were here to calculate it out.

“In there,” Dupuis gestured towards the railing across from them, and it took Jyn a moment to understand. She’d dumped it in the preserved area of the botanical garden, back and away from the railings. “I, um, I threw it in there when no one was looking. I meant to just, oh, to just hide it behind some of the bigger patches of _favolaschia calocera,_ but I was so nervous, and I overshot, and it ended up right in a patch of blooming _hericium erinaceus_ and I’m _so sorry!”_

Jyn squinted into the gloomy, marshy patch of land beyond the railing, but she knew it was no good. Something like Mynock’s Mane wouldn’t be anywhere near the pathways of a public place like this. They would have it in the back, far away from children’s grasping fingers or foolish tourists wanting to stroke the fluffy looking fungus.

“Doctor,” Cassian said behind her, the soothing cheerfulness replaced now with a professional kind of exhaustion. “Please slow down, and explain to me exactly where the data is.”

It startled Jyn so much that she pivoted on her heel to face him. Her move, or perhaps her attention, drew Cassian’s gaze to her face. He frowned and tilted his head, clearly as surprised by her reaction as she was by his ignorance.

“Oh, um, I’m sorry,” Dupuis said again. “Got a little caught up. It’s just that, I forget you’re not actually –“

“I’ve got it,” Jyn cut the researcher off before she admitted, _out loud in a public space_ , that she knew they were undercover rebels. _Shit_ , Jyn had forgotten how bad civilians could be at this sort of thing. “You should go, Doctor.”

They both turned to stare at her now, Dupuis fiddling with her bag strap uncomfortably. “Oh, good,” she swallowed. “So…then, can I get…?”

Jyn nodded to Cassian, who pulled the envelope from his jacket and handed it to the researcher.

The woman closed her eyes and clutched the slim packet to her chest. “Oh, gods,” she breathed. “Gods of seas and stars. Thank you. Thank you _so much_.”

“Travel safely, Doctor Rowan Fisher,” Cassian said, his eyes still locked with Jyn’s. “Please destroy your old scandocs immediately.”

“I will,” she promised, and shuffled to her feet, still clutching the envelope to her chest. “I will. Thank you. Thank you. And I’m really sorry.”

“Go,” Jyn told her bluntly, because the woman looked ready to cry again, because every second she stood there breathlessly thanking them was a second she increased the odds they would get noticed.

The researcher – former Doctor Dupuis, now Doctor Fisher – reached out one more time and squeezed Cassian’s wrist, and then she strode away, vanishing into the crowd headed towards the spaceport.

“She might be lying,” Cassian said quietly. “About the data.”

“You didn’t get much wilderness survival training,” Jyn replied in the same tone.

He shrugged, standing up slowly from the bench. He didn’t groan or wince, but the tightness in his face told her everything she needed to know about his pain.

The botanical garden hummed with the people, birds, and insects bustling all around them, leaving Jyn and Cassian in a small bubble of gentle white noise and silence.

Finally, Jyn rolled her shoulders. “They won’t have much of it, but what they have will be in the far back,” she told him.

Cassian gestured for her to lead the way, both of them strolling casually around the railing and down the side lane, away from the main flow of the crowds. “What will?”

 “ _Hericium erinaceus,”_ Jyn glanced around the corner – no patrols, no tourists watching, no security cameras honed in on them. She ducked under the railing, and strode swiftly forward, into the large multicolored trees that overhung the swampy preserve. “Commonly called the Mynock’s Mane. Rare. Requires a lot of permits to grow. Prefers high spaces, humid air, and low light. If there’s a _favolaschia_ patch nearby, it probably is growing on rocks.” She shrugged. “Or fake rocks, whatever they have here in this place.”

“You know about fungus,” Cassian murmured, reaching to push a low-hanging branch out of their way over her shoulder, like a Core world gentleman holding open a door for her.

Jyn rolled her eyes at him, and forged ahead, pausing to wait as he slipped into the shadowy faux-forest after her. “I had a lot of time, as a kid. And not a lot of other people around to play with. My mother taught me some of it, first. And then Saw, later.”

The sudden weight of the words struck her in the chest, and Jyn stumbled. Cassian’s hand on her shoulder steadied her, the warmth she had waited to feel earlier washing through her now.

Jyn closed her eyes, leaned back into his palm for just a second, then went on. The mud was shallow here, tugging at her boots but not sucking her down like a real swamp. Cassian moved almost silent behind her, but even he couldn’t stop the faint squelch of their footsteps. If she listened hard, she could pick out a slight irregularity in his steps, the barest hint of a limp.

“We have a problem, though,” Jyn told him, to cover the painful moment, to push aside the flare of fear and frustration as she tried not to imagine the pain he must be suppressing.

Cassian’s fingertips brushed against her lower back as she stepped over a large bed of glowing blue _entomola hochstetteri_ mushrooms, careful not to drag her muddy boots through the delicate curved tops. “Just the one?”

She couldn’t tell without seeing his face if that comment was more bitterness than humor, so she ignored it. “If she really threw it right into the middle of a big patch,” Jyn sighed, “then it’s a pretty big problem.”

“Why?”

They rounded another multicolored tree trunk, where the preserve suddenly opened up into thin dirt paths that wandered through the trees and around each large bed of fungi. This was where the garden staff and researchers tended and studied the rarer, less public-friendly species of fungus. A few steps away, a brilliant splash of orange drew her eye, a tall pile of delicately webbed orange lace splayed out like a dozen fans waving at her. _Favolaschia_ _calocera,_ better known as Wookiee Kisses. Probably because eating one would turn the average sentient’s face into a bleeding nightmare of open sores shaped curiously like claw marks.

Jyn stopped, scanned the area around the Wookiee Kisses. She pointed upwards, to the fake-stone paneling on the wall of the botanical preserve. Halfway up the false mountain-side, a large patch of stringy white fungus hung in a giant blob bigger than Jyn’s torso. She had never really understood why it was called Mynock’s Mane; mynocks were lizards with thin, sparse bristles. The fungus patch here looked more like someone had ripped a chunk of fur off a particularly luxurious wampa, then stuck the fur up on a wall.

“I think…” Cassian squinted into the hanging white strands. “I see it. Data chip, right… _there.”_

He lifted his hand towards the patch, and Jyn’s heart dropped into her gut. She lunged, grabbing his arm and yanking it back, the warning shout caught in her suddenly tight throat because a shout would draw guards, would draw blasterfire and death. But _fire and fuck_ , he had almost plunged his bare hand directly into a Mynock’s Mane! Didn’t the Alliance teach their operatives _anything_ outside of urban environments?

“What’s wrong?” Cassian asked, and she realized she was still clutching his forearm, her fingers so tight they were trembling. She forced her grip to loosen, but couldn’t quite bring herself to let go entirely. Cassian glanced at the fungus patch, and then her again. “Poisonous?”

“Very,” she managed. “Very, _very_ poisonous.”

“Ah.”

“We had a soldier pick some on Onderon,” Jyn shivered. “His skin peeled off his fingers within the hour, and the spores got into his blood. The veins turned black and – “

“Okay,” Cassian cut her off, tugging her hand from his forearm and wrapping it in his own. “I won’t touch it, okay? It’s fine. I understand.”

She snorted at him. “Don’t use that voice on me. I’m not a mark.”

“No,” he cleared his throat, dropping both the soothing tone and her hand. “Of course.”

Jyn scowled, then stepped back, putting a little more space between them again. Her heart still beat too fast, her throat a little too tight for comfort as her fear receded but didn’t vanish. “So,” she snapped. “The data chip. How do we get it?”

Cassian sighed, rubbed tiredly at his lower back. ( _Either he’s stopped trying to hide it_ , she thought darkly _, or_ _he’s just in too much pain to bother anymore_.) “I don’t know,” he made an irritated, dismissive gesture with his free hand, the other still digging his knuckles into his lower back. “Set it on fucking fire.”

It felt like cold water dumped over her head. Cassian did not swear out loud often, and when he did it was usually in his native tongue. He never swore aloud while on a mission unless his persona called for it. He saw her staring at him, closed his eyes and turned away. “Sorry,” he grunted, running a hand through his hair and then folding his arms tightly. He glowered at the Mynock’s Mane, tapping one finger against his bicep. “I don’t have a wire,” he said. “Can’t fish it out. Ideas?”

The warmth from his hand still lingered in her shoulder. Maybe he should have gone back to the ship, she thought, eyeing the stiffness in his spine and the angry set of his jaw. On the other hand, she probably would have bungled the thing with the scared civilian.

And she wouldn’t want to be here without him. Or anywhere, for that matter. Professionalism be damned; he could be angry with her about it later. Right now, he was in pain and she was just making it worse. She needed to get her act together and actually be a decent partner for a few minutes.

“Hey,” she said, and stepped a little closer. “What do you need?”

“Besides a lighter?” Cassian shook his head, glowering at the Mynock’s Mane and digging his knuckles in a little harder to his back. The move distorted his shirt, pulling it down a little and exposing the back of his neck. “I don’t know. Maybe one of these tree branches? A thin one, to prod the chip out?”

He stilled as Jyn pressed her fingers to the strip of skin at his nape. “Cassian,” she whispered, feeling him go still beneath her touch. She swept a glance through the trees around them, but despite the distant hum of the crowds, they were isolated from the paths, the gardens, the guardhouse. “What do you need?”

Cassian turned around sharply, the move somehow closing the space between them far faster than she anticipated. He somehow managed to twist without dislodging her hand, so Jyn found herself gripping the back of his neck with his face startlingly close to hers, her nerves lighting up as his body heat washed over her.

Reflexively, she opened her mouth to say…something. His name, perhaps, or a repeat of her question. Whatever it was she meant to say, she forgot it in the next breath, because Cassian was still moving, slipping his fingers up her neck to cup the back of her head, his thumbs pressing into her jawline as he pulled her roughly up.

The first kiss was hard, her breath catching as his teeth scraped over her lower lip; he pulled her so close that she bent back under the weight and warmth of him. There was a burning need in that kiss that ignited the same in her, a slow fire spreading under her skin, crackling along the paths laid by her veins. Jyn staggered for a moment, off balance and breathless with his touch, with the way he wound his fingers tight into her hair, the soft, hungry groan he made in the back of his throat when she caught his belt with both hands to steady herself.

The groan, a sound she felt more than heard, surged through her like a flashfire. The heat fried every other thought to ash and narrowed the world down to the rough scrape of his stubble against her skin, the warm and wet press of his mouth against hers, the catch of his breath when she dragged her nails around his hips to his back and curved her body to fit perfectly against his. She could feel him arch under her hands, his chest pushing against hers as his breathing quickened. She hummed softly, encouragingly, because she wanted him to stretch out, wanted him to relax into her, wanted him to stop hurting so damn much – fuck, there were so many things she wanted for him, and she could never find the right words for it. So she kissed him as hard as she could and dug her knuckles into the rigid muscles in his lower back, and gasped a little when he groaned again.

She dug her fingers in again, fighting against the hard knots she could feel on either side of his spine, a little thrill running through her at the way he pushed back against her hands. And then Cassian drew a great shuddering breath, and pulled back slightly. He didn’t break the kiss, but he gentled it, his fingers now stroking through her hair rather than tangled desperately in it, his mouth soft against hers.

Jyn suppressed the flash of rebellion that made her want to rise up on her toes and urge him back to the rough pleasure of before. She could do it, too, she knew exactly where to press her hungry mouth, knew that if she scraped her nails along his spine or rolled her hips just so, he would shiver and turn hungry again. But this wasn’t about what _she_ wanted. So she let him slow down, let him turn it tender and calm, until at last he turned his head and rested his forehead against hers, his eyes closed and his breathing slow, even.

Jyn watched him through her eyelashes, tracing light patterns across his back with her fingertips. _I’m not leaving_ , she thought, but couldn’t bring herself to say. Didn’t need to say. _I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere_.

Cassian ran his hands down the sides of her neck, along the sweep of her shoulders, traced his palms down the curves of her sides until he at last curled his fingers around the swell of her hips. “Okay,” he whispered, his breath feather soft against her cheek. “Okay.”

He straightened, letting his fingers drag down her hips as he dropped his hands and stepped a little further back. This time, the distance felt safe. Comfortable. Just a little room to breathe, but still together.

“Magnetite,” he said abruptly. “The walls here. They slapped magnetite over the plas-steel, didn’t they?”

Jyn blinked, her lips still tingling, her mind a little hazy. Cassian quirked an eyebrow at her, a faint smile hovering in the corner of his mouth, not quite a smirk, but definitely…knowing. Jyn glared at him, not about to admit that he had driven her to distraction in the middle of a fancy public garden. And then her brain finally woke up the rest of the way, and she realized what he was saying.  “The chip is in a metal case.”

He nodded, the smile growing a little wider. “Here.” He moved closer to the wall, careful to stay well out of reach of the deadly Mynock’s Mane, and rapped a knuckle against the rough stone of the false mountain. “This should work.” He pulled his largest vibroblade from under his vest, flipped it casually in his hand (he seemed remarkably chipper all of the sudden, Jyn thought wryly, but abstained from mentioning), and slammed the hilt down sharply on to the stone. A small chunk of the silvery-black stone broke off the wall. Cassian caught it before it fell into the mud, and held it in his open palm. “Got a thread?”

Jyn was already hunting through her thigh pouch, pulling out a small bundle of thin cord she carried in her survival kit. She reached for the magnetite, but Cassian was quicker, catching her hand and lifting it, kissing her knuckles as he deftly plucked the cord from her fingers. Jyn rolled her eyes at him (but didn’t work too hard to hide the smile tugging at her own lips), and took the opportunity to scan the woods for any potential enemies as he tied the cord around the stone. No, they were still alone, unobserved, safe. Relatively.

“Ten credits says I can get it on the first try,” Cassian said, swinging the stone around in a precise arc.

“No bet,” Jyn shook her head, because she wasn’t a sucker. Sure enough, Cassian flung the stone with expert aim, and even through the thick white strands, Jyn could hear the tiny _crack_ as the magnetite lure snagged against the metal case of the data chip.

“Impressive,” she said with mock gravity as he tugged lightly on the cord, checking that the chip was well attached before he started to pull. “On the other hand, we could have just burned the damn thing.”

“Very funny.” Cassian shot her a repressive look as he reeled the cord in carefully, until the magnetite and the chip dangled in the air under his hand. He held it out, waiting for Jyn to unwind her scarf and wrap it around the stone and chip, as tight and secure as she could manage, taking great care to never let her skin come in contact with the cord, either. The spores of the Mynock’s Mane would die within an hour of being separate from the fungus, but they could stay pretty potent up until then. She would seal this in an airtight case as soon as they were back on the ship and headed out of Chandrilan space.

Cassian helped her tuck the bundle into her empty thigh pouch, only just big enough for the scarf, the cord, the stone, and the chip all together. He snapped the cover closed over it, and then playfully flicked the heavy leather strap running around her thigh. “No room for mushrooms,” he said mildly.

Jyn grabbed his collar and yanked him down, pressing a quick hard kiss to the sensitive spot just below his ear. He didn’t quite stumble, but he swallowed hard, and when she darted out of reach before he could retaliate, he cleared his throat and made a half-hearted attempt to wipe the pleased surprise from his face.

“Solo is safe from fungal laxatives,” she agreed solemnly, her own face perfectly composed.

“Oh good,” Cassian ran a hand through his hair. “Because I was so worried about Solo.” He met her flat stare with that half-smile still soft on his face, and then he winked.

Jyn’s composure cracked, because the lines of pain around his eyes had eased, because he looked happier than he had all day, because he still couldn’t close one eye at a time, because he was smiling at her like she was the bright heart of the universe. Jyn laughed, low in her throat, and then shook her head. “Come on,” she murmured, tilting her head back through the trees towards the far, gentle sounds of the oblivious crowds. “Let’s go home.”

“Yes,” he agreed, reaching for her hand again. “Home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These are all real-world mushrooms, aside from the "Star Wars common names" I invented - and the fact that _hericium erinaceus_ is not, in fact, poisonous. 
> 
> I had way [too much fun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hericium_erinaceus) looking up [mushrooms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favolaschia_calocera) while I wrote [this](https://www.google.com/search?q=bizarre+mushrooms&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwim8Lyc6tzdAhVCXK0KHZIJC1cQ_AUIDigB&biw=1745&bih=808). And originally, I had [dick jokes](http://www.lifebuzz.com/mushrooms/>way%20more</a>%20<a%20href=) planned for it, but [in the end](https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlypenis/comments/8mqkai/a_horny_stinkhorn_mushroom/), I went the more [mature](https://www.elitereaders.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/penis-mushroom-purpose-featured-1.jpg) route. Ah well. Another time.


	8. the past is a trap, the future's a cipher

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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> Prompt from @ibonekoen: _Don't lose your head!_

 

Cassian climbs the rock face every day, and Jyn doesn’t know what to do about it.

She knows what she wants to _happen_ ; she wants him to stop, because the mountains of Belazura are some of the most beautiful in the galaxy, but the particular spiny columns of stone of their current location are also some of the most dangerous. Jyn had been a little excited, a little curious, and a little concerned when they first broke atmo over the city of Umag and she saw the green and grey spires breaking through the low cloud cover. They looked like Jedi-tale castles adrift in a sea of thick, foamy white. Cassian had not commented on the fantastic view, too busy flying them through the incredibly complex airspace to find the correct landing spot near the Bright Futures Medical Research Academy where Željko and Ivica would be checking in as “interested business investors.” Code, Jyn curled her lip with distaste when she thinks of it, for “people willing to pay for tests that support their product.”

It isn’t a particularly hard job; in fact, they spend surprisingly little time at the Academy being briefed on various “opportunities” for the wealthy Imperial investors that they supposedly represent. And Cassian is a kriffing expert on holding long, boring conversations with the eager research supervisors escorting them around, keeping their attention perfectly diverted as Jyn casually slips her datachip into the nearest console and downloads all the medical updates they have. So far they’ve made five trips to the Academy, and walked out with enough information every time to make Alliance Medical dissolve into tears. Updates to bacta formulas, locations of medical equipment suppliers – Belazura is one of the favored medical retreats for the fabulously wealthy in the Empire, and thus has connections, information, and resources everywhere for everything.

But it only take up about five or six hours of their day, and in the meantime, they are expected to act like upperclass business professionals milking their company trip to a cushy resort for all it’s worth. They aren’t staying in one of the truly fancy plazas or palaces down in the foothills, but in a reasonably nice vacation bungalow a few columns away from the Academy. The bungalow is built into the side of the rocky column, roughly a mile above the canyon floor far below. Of course, Jyn can never tell how high they are by looking – the cloud cover is always just thirty meters or so below their wide balcony that leads to the path curving towards the far side of the column. A short walk along the path brings them to the busy spaceport and touristy town center built into the top of the giant stone pillar.

Cassian uses the path when he walks with her to their shuttle every morning, and when they make brief excursions to the town for food or to keep up appearances. When they aren’t doing that, however, Cassian is…restless. More than she’s ever really seen him. More than Jyn herself, which is – well, it’s saying something. He paces around the well-furnished but small confines of the bungalow. He picks up his datapad, pokes at it, sets it down. He makes tea for her, even when her previous cup still has some left. He does sit ups or push ups or some other repetitive exercise, then paces more. When she talks to him, he tends to answer in short, terse sentences, but then looks frustrated with himself (or with the conversation, or with her, she’s not sure).

And every morning, just as dawn finds its tentative way through the maze of mountain spires, Jyn walks out on the balcony to find his jacket slung over one of the chairs, and no trace of him anywhere until he drops suddenly from the decoratively carved overhanging stone to land in the center of the balcony. The first time, he shrugs and points up – “takes about half an hour, straight up,” he says.

Jyn drops her hand from her vibroblade handle (she keeps it hidden when they are at the Academy, but at the hotel, it’s comfortably at her side), and wills her heartrate to slow. She watches him swipe at the sweat on his forehead and grab his jacket before heading inside, presumably to shower before he changes into the casual business clothes they’ve both been wearing (she hates them, hates the scratch and pull and pinch, the limited range of movement, the stupid way all the men here keep glancing at her legs as if surprised that she’s not wearing a skirt). There is grey dust under his nails, and all over his clothes. A green stain on his right knee, as if he’s been kneeling in the thick moss that grows all over the peaks.

“It’s a long way down,” Jyn says just before he walks through the door to their bungalow.

Cassian shrugs again. “I’m careful.” He slows, puts his hand on the doorframe and meets her eyes. “I am,” he promises her quietly, his voice firm and reassuring but his eyes shuttered, unreadable. “Trust me.”

And there’s nothing she can say after that.

That night she curls close to him, her arm tight around his waist, her cheek pressed to his chest. She stares up into the darkness over the bed, picking out the weird, twisting shapes of the carved frescoes in the ceiling that extend down at regular intervals along the support beams. In the dark, they look like cold, stony hands, stretching towards them. It makes her huddle closer to Cassian, covering his chest with as much of her body as she can. He rubs his hand reflexively down her arm before he stills, and she doesn’t know for sure if he’s awake or not. Either way, he doesn’t speak, and she doesn’t know how to break the silence. Isn’t sure she should.

The wind whistles through the mountain pillars in fitful howls and whines, not at all like the steady roaring drone of the cooling fans in Scarif Tower. Not loud enough to drown out the sound of Cassian’s steady heartbeat under her ear.

All the same, the sound of bones breaking haunt her restless dreams.

She wakes up the next morning to an empty bed, a jacket on the balcony, and the silence of the white cloudy sea below. She stands there, her arms tight around her ribs, until he drops back down and scrubs a dusty hand through his sweat-slickened hair, leaving a grey streak down the side of his head. He smiles vaguely when he sees her, drops a kiss on her temple as he passes, and makes some quiet comment about how Željko plans on asking the supervisor of the cosmetic surgeries department about the new anti-aging technique, which will probably keep the man waxing lyrical about the miracles of their (very expensive) work for a couple hours. “Ivica can get hungry, and ask to walk to the cafeteria,” Cassian says over his shoulder. “The supervisor won’t interrupt his sales pitch to get another escort just for that.”

The cafeteria is right next to a lab for analysis of various antibiotics. Jyn understands that this is her next target, then. She stares at the moss-stains on Cassian’s right side (did he lie down in the moss, or did he slip and skid along a patch on the wall before he caught himself?) and suddenly the antibiotics, the Academy, the war – it all feels very far away, and insignificant.

“If anyone sees you up there…” she calls, just before he turns the corner inside towards the ‘fresher.

“They’ll think Željko is a thrill-seeker,” he waves a dismissive hand, and vanishes.

The wind tugs at Jyn’s hair, throwing the sleep-mussed tangle into her eyes. “Is he?” She asks, her voice thin and strained to her ears. The wind does not reply.

The third day, she doesn’t say anything at all when he drops down in front of her, nor the fourth. She thinks about climbing after him, just walking up and following him onto the cliff face without a word. She already knows what he would do, though, knows that he would immediately drop back down and lead her inside. He would stop climbing, and probably neither of them would speak of it again. But that would be worse than speaking, somehow, as if she were deliberately trying to punish him, or make him feel guilty. She doesn’t want to do either of those things.

She doesn’t really know what she wants to do.

On the fifth day, she dreams that she’s clinging to a tall rock face – at the top, the scream of dueling fighter craft and the whine of blaster fire, at the bottom, a cold grey sea lashing against sandy black shores. If she drops down, she will plunge into the freezing water and drown. If she climbs up, she will stand alone and exposed to the battle raging overhead. She clings to the tower and stares down at the sea; the thick white foam on the waves swirls higher and higher, until at last it swallows her up.

She wakes when the too-soft hotel mattress dips beneath her, Cassian padding from the bed to the door. She watches through her eyelashes as he fumbles in the grey pre-dawn light for his jacket, and slings it over his shoulders as he walks outside. She lies still and waits for another five minutes, ten, until she’s sure that he’s gone up the side of the balcony and out onto the cliff face.

Her datapad is tucked inside her pack, left handily at the side of the bed. She fishes it out, rakes her fingers through her hair until she forces it into a reasonable bun, and then types in a series of complex codes. Firewall, firewall, encryptions one, two, and three, and a special access-release virus for anyone attempting to access the streaming feed without a very specific password that she had told to exactly one person in the entire galaxy.

It might not go through anyway. She does a little mental math, tapping her fingers on her thigh as she counts. Cassian always smirks and kisses her knuckles when she does that, teasingly asking if she wants some help – but he isn’t here, and the silence makes her muscles tense, makes her strike her fingers a little harder than usual against her skin. She shakes her head to clear it and refocuses on the math. Home One is drifting in Takodana space right now, or should be. That’s twelve time zones, three calendar savings adjustments, and one trade route conversion away. So if it’s an hour before dawn on the southern hemisphere of Belazura, it’s….evening time on Home One, two days ahead. Three days? Shite. Two. Probably two. Or three.

The datapad flashes, then buzzes softly. Jyn sets it flat on the bed in front of her crossed legs and hits the accept key. A fuzzy blue hologram pops up over the pad, and the blue static stabilizes into a smiling face.

“Hey!” Bodhi waves at her, his hand rising into the holocam’s field of view and then vanishing as he drops it below his shoulders again. “Good timing! It’s, um, it’s almost game time.” He leans to the side and calls to someone she can’t see, “Hey, look, look who it is!”

Jyn’s shoulders tense as more voices babble offscreen, coming closer, and then drop in relief as three more figures crowd into the holo. Baze stands almost directly behind Bodhi, putting his face clearly in the projector limits, but Chirrut misses the mark slightly and only gets the left half of his face into the field of view, leaving her with a disturbing half-head projection floating over her bed. Behind Chirrut, Kay’s wide torso hovers in midair.

“Oh, hang on, hang on,” Bodhi flaps his hands and leans forward, the holo suddenly flickering and leaving her staring at a disembodied ponytail floating weirdly over the datapad.

“Who gave you that haircut?” she asks mildly. “Looks like a nerf has been chewing on your head.”

“Ha ha, you’re so funny,” the ponytail replies flatly, and then abruptly the projector limits widen, and Bodhi leans back as the other three reappear, fully formed and arranged around him.

“Good morning,” Chirrut smiles at some point over her shoulder. “You are right on time.”

Behind him, Baze rolls his eyes. Jyn has never really decided if she believes Chirrut’s “mystical being” act – on the one hand, he has a truly uncanny knack for knowing things that she can never explain properly, on the other, he smiles like a conman and makes the galaxy’s worst puns. But the look on Baze’s face when anyone encourages Chirrut’s games is usually funny enough to make it worth playing along. So she brings her knees up and wraps her arms around them, smirking into the projector. “As you foretold, of course,” she says.

Chirrut’s grin broadens and he bows his head, though his sightless gaze stays fixed in her direction. “Of course.”

“The semi-final starts in twenty minutes,” Baze grunts. “We all knew she would call.”

“Actually, _I_ expected her to call in two hours,” Kay replies, a touch repressively. “When the game was complete. We can’t tell you anything interesting _now_ ,” he tells her a touch sourly, because clearly, Jyn’s refusal to behave logically has let him down again. “They are only posturing on the field. No action.”

“I’ll check back later, then,” Jyn murmurs. She doesn’t specify any further, however; she doesn’t know when she will have the chance to comm again and she doesn’t want to work out the time difference right now. If the semi-final is about to start, Home One is three days ahead of her. Eh, she was close enough in her math. Cassian would have figured it out correctly the first time, of course.

But Cassian isn’t here, so she shakes the thought away and focuses on the holo.

Bodhi shuffles to the side, trying to make more room for Chirrut in the holo projector. “So,” he says, a little distractedly. “Have you been checking out the sights? Maybe, uh, maybe go to one of those fancy spa places?”

“Beauty of the spirit is more important than beauty of the face,” Chirrut says wisely, tapping his staff against the ground. “However,” he concedes, “peace of body can lead to peace of heart.”

“Avoid the mud baths,” Baze grunts. “Smells strange. Dirt in your beard.”

“Ivica does not have a beard,” Kay informs him. “And the Belazura Medical Academy is not located near a tourist-friendly mud bath facility.”

“Pity,” Chirrut says.

“There are lots of salt springs in the lower caverns of their specific mountain, however. Those are supposed to be very soothing to Human muscles.” Kay hunches in the holo so his optics are more at Jyn’s level. “A bad place for physical intimacy, though. The salt concentration is high and may cause chafing and discomfort.”

“Right, um,” Bodhi cuts in quickly, shooting an exasperated but fond look at him. “ _Anyway_. Have you seen, you know, anything cool?”

Jyn offers a thin smile in return. “I don’t like the tourist traps,” she says, striving to sound casual and unaffected. “Noisy.”

Bodhi’s smile fades immediately, and Jyn could slap herself, because that was the worst attempt at disguising her mood she’s made in months. “What’s wrong? Where’s Ca- uh, where’s Jeko?”

“Željko,” Jyn corrects, picking at a loose thread in the sheets.

“Željko Kovačić,” Kay adds. “Financial Analyst, Dynamet Corporation. Married to Ivica Babić, Business Development Advisor.” 

“Your accent is quite good,” Chirrut reaches up and pats Kay’s hip. “Well done.”

Jyn can hear Kay whirring softly even through the holo. “Thank you.”

For a moment, she hopes that the distraction is enough, but Bodhi shifts in the holo, his nose scrunching. “You, uh, you guys…okay?”

Jyn shrugs, winding the loose thread around her fingertip until the flesh turns purple, and then letting it unwind.

Baze’s heavy eyebrows lower, Bodhi squints a little at her through the holo, and Chirrut places both hands on the top of his staff meditatively. Only Kay gives no outward reaction, but she has a feeling he’s already running analysis of her voice modulation and body language. A surge of prickly annoyance flashes up her back and then fades just as quickly. It’s taken her two years to learn that they aren’t looking for weaknesses, that this is just how people try to understand one another. She doesn’t know how to explain, though. Doesn’t know what to say. Isn’t even entirely sure why she called them at all. A small part of her wants to tell them she’s got work to do, make some excuse to shut off the holo and…and go out on the balcony. Stand in the center and listen for the scrape of a body against the rocks.

The wind whistles outside the bungalow, louder in the grey silence than it had seemed last night in the dark, with Cassian’s breathing just over her head and his heartbeat in her ear.

Jyn clears her throat. She’s started down this path, and anyway silence hasn’t given her anything but nightmares and an empty bed.

“He’s climbing,” she says at last.

“A healthy activity,” Chirrut purses his lips thoughtfully. “Usually.”

Baze is less inclined to wait her out. “Climbing what?”

Jyn winds the thread around her fingertip again. “The mountain.”

“The…mountain?” Bodhi blinks; he had been there when Jyn started her research on the location, so he’s seen the sheer cliffsides they are staying on. “The big, um, big, scary mountain spikey thing that the city is perched on? He’s, uh, he’s _climbing_ it?”

She nods.

“Aren’t you, um, a couple klicks up?”

Kay whirrs again, a little higher and faster this time. “One point nine three kilometers, Galactic, standard.”

Bodhi glances at Chirrut, who of course doesn’t respond, and then he turns and looks back at Baze, who only deepens his scowl. Finally, he meets Jyn’s eyes again. “ _Why?”_

“Every morning,” Jyn says instead of answering, because she doesn’t know. “Takes him about an hour, up and down. He doesn’t…” she grits her teeth. “He doesn’t use a spike. He just -” She makes a futile gesture, because words fail her, as they always do.

“That is a bad idea,” Kay says.

“That is a really, really bad idea,” Bodhi bursts out.

Baze crosses his arms and shakes his head.

In a way, their disapproval warms her. It _is_ a bad idea. It _is_ strange and worrying. She’s not overreacting. She’s not just panicking over nothing, over a little morning exercise. She’s not just letting her nightmares override her sense.

“Have you had,” Chirrut asks, his voice still even and thoughtful, “a lot of time to rest?”

“Work’s not hard,” Jyn nods. “Done by midday. We mostly catch up on paperwork and…stuff.”

“There is a high chance that ‘stuff’ is a euphemism for sex,” Kay tells Bodhi in a very matter of fact tone. Bodhi slaps a hand over his face and groans.

“Stop that,” Jyn points at Kay, raising an eyebrow at him. It’s an expression she’s seen Cassian use to great effect against his friend, and it works now.

Kay makes a short grinding noise that is a droid’s version of a harrumph. “He is very susceptible to this form of humor. You are no fun at all.” But he subsides, and Bodhi clears his throat loudly and drops his hand.

“I wonder,” Chirrut continues as if none of them have spoken, “how often Željko has been in any place of peace. I wonder how often he has been in such a place with time to spare.”

“He’s been a lot of places,” Jyn frowns. The loose thread is three times as long now, and she winds it all the way around her finger from tip to base. The white thread is striking against her purple skin, and when she unwinds it again, it leaves thin distinct lines in her flesh even as the skin returns to a normal pink.

“As have you,” Chirrut agrees placidly. But there’s a significant sort of pause at the end, as the sentence is unfinished but he’s waiting for her to fill in the blank. The others must hear it, too, because none of them speak now.

She starts to wind the thread around her finger again, tip to base. “I’ve been…” she watches her knuckle slowly turn purple, unwinds the thread. “There are always clouds here,” she says at last. “Just below our balcony. I’ve been,” she shrugs. “Watching them.”

“Sounds nice,” Bodhi nods, encouraging. “Relaxing.”

“What purpose does that serve?” Kay asked.

“Tell me about them,” Chirrut taps his staff once, and the others hush. “Tell me about the clouds.”

“White,” she says. “Mostly. Some greys, a little blue and pink. Red and orange at sunset. Grey and blue at dawn. Thick. It’s like…like watching the sea. Heavy, rolling sea. They even crash, like waves, around the mountain pillars. They move fast, too, even though you can’t always hear the wind so well. The way they carve this place, I think. Deadens the sound. But you look out at the clouds and you can see them rushing past, like tides, and you know the wind is powerful. But they’re so…so solid. They look like you could dive in and they would hold you up and keep you safe.” Acid coats the back of her tongue, her throat constricting with sudden fear and bile. “But they won’t. They _won’t_. You’ll just fall right through, all the way down to the bottom, and there’s no climbing back up from _that._ ”

The acid in her voice burns the air, and Jyn hugs her knees to her chest when she is done, because she can’t take it back, can’t hide the obvious fear and anger and hurt that she has just thrown out on fucking display for them all to see.

“And what do you think about,” Chirrut asks, “When you watch these lovely clouds?”

It’s not the response she expects, so Jyn reaches down and plucks at the thread again, feeling wrong footed and aggrieved. “Nothing,” she snaps.

None of them respond. She doesn’t look up, but she has a suspicion that Chirrut is signaling the rest to keep their mouths (or verbal processor) shut while he walks her to…whatever he’s getting at. She could just shut off the holo.

She winds the thread around her fingers, watches her skin go purple again. “Nothing specific,” she concedes at last. “Sometimes just…work things. What we’re doing here. How it might…affect people, later. Sometimes other works stuff. Other…projects. Things we’ve been working on elsewhere. Things we’re going to do next. Sometimes…” she swallows, the acid still burning her throat. “Other things. That we’re going to do…that aren’t work.” She snorts and shakes her head. “Like later. When the…when we’re not doing,” she unwinds the thread, raises her hand and waves it vaguely around. “This.”

 _Assuming_ , she adds mentally, _we live that long_.

“I wonder,” Chirrut muses, as if this is a perfectly normal conversation for them to have. “What he thinks of, during all those off-duty hours. All those quiet, peaceful, non-busy hours, disconnected as you both are from the larger galaxy and all her troubles.”

“Don’t know,” Jyn bites out, the tension and irritation flaring back up in her muscles. She winds the thread around her finger again tighter than before, until her fingertip buzzes and goes numb. “Rocks. Moss. The best path that will take him up the damn mountainside.”

“Handholds,” Baze grunted.

“Balance,” Bodhi offers, then coughs. “Probably.”

“Wind angles,” is Kay’s contribution.

“The best path that will take him safely up the mountainside,” Chirrut agrees.

The thread snaps off the sheet, and begins to slowly unwind from Jyn’s finger.

“I keep dreaming,” she confesses, barely more than a hoarse whisper. “Of the tower.”

“Oh wow,” Bodhi says in a startled voice, and when she glances up, he’s staring more into the distance than at her. “That’s the first time I’ve ever wanted to punch C-, uh, Jelko.”

“Željko,” Kay corrects, but to her mild surprise, doesn’t repeat the whole identity.

“It’s not his fault,” she says defensively (she’s not entirely sure why, and not entirely sure she believes it). “He’s…coping. Everyone copes in their own way.”

“Yeah, my, uh, my doctor says that, too,” Bodhi snaps back from wherever he’s staring, shaking his head.

“My friend,” Chirrut interrupts serenely. “How would you prefer he cope?”

Jyn hesitates, bites her lip. “Don’t know.” She bites the words out, nettled, but Chirrut is stubborn too and he waits her out. “I don’t know,” she repeats at length, but this time it’s an acknowledgement and not a defensive block. “Find some…some other way to fill his time. Something else he can focus on.”

Kay whirrs, but Bodhi’s hand jerks up and stabs a finger at the droid. “ _Don’t,_ ” he warns, “make a sex joke.”

“Comedic timing is very important,” Kay replies with dignity.

“And this would have been a very bad time,” Bodhi glowers.

“How do you know I would have made a joke, when Ivica is clearly in distress?”

Jyn raises an eyebrow, unimpressed with his wounded attitude. “Were you?”

Kay whirrs. “That,” he says after a beat, “is classified information.”

“Little sister,” Baze, who has been quiet for some time, drops his folded arms and leans forward, balancing his weight on the back of Chirrut’s chair. Jyn stops glaring at Kay and meets his holographic eyes. “The bone healed wrong,” he says simply. “You must re-break it.”

“Um,” Bodhi clears his throat, his voice increasing in pitch, “ _which_ bone are we, uh, breaking?”

Jyn looks at Baze’s serious face, Chirrut’s calm smile, Bodhi’s confusion and Kay’s silent patience, and she thinks…maybe she gets it. “Yeah,” she says slowly. “Yeah, I…I think so.”

“Wait, wait,” Bodhi flaps his hands. “What? Are you – are you breaking his bones? Did we just convince you to break his bones? Because I said I wanted, wanted to punch him, but I didn’t mean, you know –“

“Good luck, my friend!” Chirrut flashes his teeth at her in a broad grin. “We look forward to seeing you home safely again!”

“I also advise against attacking Željko,” Kay says loudly, as Bodhi stutters and Baze reaches towards the holo screen, presumably to switch it off. “The odds are that they will both end up in considerable distress.”

“Bye,” Baze grunts, and then the holo flickers and vanishes.

Jyn glances at the chrono. She has about thirty minutes until he’s back from his climb (he _will_ come back, she tells the spike of fear in her gut fiercely; he _always_ comes back), and then about thirty minutes more while Cassian showers, changes, and generally makes his appearance acceptable for work. Jyn has her morning routine down to seven minutes, including eating. That gives her roughly an hour to prep and carry out the first step of her plan. She’ll have to focus while they are at the Academy, but the afternoon should give her more time to execute her next moves.

Okay.

She can do this.

She takes a deep breath (holds it for a second, listening hard, but there is no scrape against the rocks outside, no crash, no breaking bones, only the wind), lets it out. Pulls her datapad closer, idly plucking the loose thread from the sheet and throwing it to the floor. Her screen fills with codes and symbols, and Jyn’s fingers fly over them.

Cassian walks in exactly thirty-two minutes later, his jacket slung over his arm and grey dust all down his shirt front. He walks a little slower than usual, almost peering around the bedroom door frame at her before entering. She glances up to confirm that he’s not limping or bleeding anywhere, then ducks back to her datapad.

Cassian stands at the door for a moment, watching her, and then moves without comment into the ‘fresher. She wonders if her non-appearance on the balcony this morning is what makes him step so softly now, or if he’s only wondering what has absorbed her so deeply on her datapad. A tiny, bitter part of her wonders if he only cares about her distress when she stops showing it.

(No. That’s not only cruel of her, it’s kind of stupid. If she had actually asked him to stop climbing the mountain every day, she knows perfectly well that he would have. He would have, and he probably would have apologized for it, felt like an arsehole for putting her in that position. She doesn’t want an apology. She doesn’t want him to _regret._ )

She waits until she hears the shower running – a real water shower, a luxury that both of them have fully enjoyed while they are here, because hells, it’s not one they get very often. And then Jyn sends her first trap out, biting back a tiny grin because, well…look, she doesn’t like words like “genius,” but at the moment, she kind of feels a little bit like one. And, to be totally honest, imagining the look on his face is kind of exciting.

Through the ‘fresher door, she hears the door to the shower open and then close, the timbre of the falling water changing to account for his body under the flow. She kicks up to her feet and stuffs her datapad back into her pack, striding out into the little kitchen and hunting around until she finds…ah, there it is. She’s working mostly from memory, no time to dig up the recipe on the holonet, but she’ll need _this_ , and _this_ , and…oh, right, _that_. The large jar of blue-flecked golden honey from a local apiary is heavy in her hand; she has to be careful not to drop it as she hoists herself up on the counter top and sets it carefully along the edge of the highest shelf in the kitchen, in full view.

There’s a little ‘gift basket’ sitting on the counter full of sample sized goods that neither of them have touched. They’ve only confirmed that there are no listening devices, and left it stand. Jyn eyes it, because when they were scanning it she thinks she recalls seeing… Ah, yes, _there_ , she can definitely find a good use for _that_ …

She takes a few minutes to poke around the kitchen too, because it pays to be creative and - Oh, look, and there’s a ball of twine under the sink, in the far back. Weird place for that. She glances up at the ceiling, tossing the twine ball thoughtfully in her hand. The weird carved frescoes still make her think of grasping hands, stretching down towards her head as if they mean to latch on to her hair. She glowers at them, tosses the twine ball up and down again. Hm.

Yes, she can probably use that, too.

By the time Cassian emerges from the ‘fresher, hair neatly combed, beard groomed within acceptable Imperial-aligned business standards, Jyn is also dressed, her hair in a neat bun, her face impassive. She pushes past him into the ‘fresher without speaking, shoving a warmed breakfast bun into his hand as she goes.

“Jyn,” he says softly, taking the bun reflexively but reaching for her with his free hand.

“I need to stop by the markets after the Academy today,” she interrupts smoothly, closing the door in his face.

She can hear him shuffle away from the door a moment later, and once she’s sure he’s out of earshot, she hustles to the shower and reaches for the two small toiletry kits hanging from the convenient hooks. His is larger than hers, though not by much, and she has to move carefully to avoid knocking anything out of place enough for him to notice as she fishes around for what she needs. She pulls out a small can, unscrews it and dumps the majority of the contents down the sink, screws the cap back on and tucks it away again. There. That won’t pay off for a bit, but it’s good groundwork.

When she’s done, she cleans her teeth, washes her face, and then painstakingly applies her eyeliner. This persona doesn’t smear the warrior’s lines around her eyes, dark and fierce and threatening; Ivica is neat and precise, her makeup totally pointless for anything other than appealing to powerful people’s fantasies. Jyn doesn’t really care, it’s just a pain to get the lines even.

When she comes out of the ‘fresher (nine minutes later; she half expects him to tease her on the slow day, half worries that she will give something away if he does), Cassian is leaning against the wall in the corridor outside. “Ready?” He asks quietly, his eyes hooded.

In answer, she heads for the balcony, and the path that leads up to the transport shuttles.

“Jyn,” Cassian says, and she pauses but doesn’t turn around. “Everything okay?”

 _You tell me_ , she doesn’t say, because that’s not the way she wants this to work out. That’s not the way she wants to deal with it. For once, Jyn wants to face pain with something other than a grim determination to simply bear it until it passes. For once, she wants the bone to heal clean. “Yeah,” she says instead, but she doesn’t meet his eyes, because, well, he can read her better than anyone alive, and she wants to keep her secret just a little longer. “Yeah, fine.”

The silence stretches out behind her, and then he stalks past her, headed for the balcony. “Good,” he says shortly as he passes.

Jyn grimaces, because she may have overdone that a little. Too late now, though, and she has to stretch her legs to catch up to him on the path to the shuttle.

He’s perfectly bland and amenable at the Academy, and Jyn is just as vague and forgettable, smiling vapidly as the supervisors pass them from one department to another, give them shiny, holo-filled presentations on various new pills and procedures, and completely fail to notice the datachips plugging into consoles or the long ‘fresher breaks that Jyn takes (Cassian told her earlier that it is more believable to these people if _she_ takes the long breaks, however nonsensical that seems to her).

The moment they leave the Academy, headed for their part of the fragmented mountain city, Cassian’s affable smile drops off his face, and he slumps back in the shuttle’s seat. He closes his eyes and leans his head back, though she doesn’t miss the covert way he glances at her, his jaw set.

Jyn checks her chrono discretely – good, they left right on time, which means that any second now…

His datapad beeps. Cassian picks it up, then frowns at the mess of code that erupts on his screen. He taps at it tentatively, and his eyebrows raise as the code immediately rearranges itself into a new pattern.

“Problem?” Jyn asks, working to keep her face relaxed and only mildly interested.

“I think…” he taps again, blinks as the code rearranges itself again in response. “I think it’s from Kay,” he mutters.

Jyn bites her lip and turns away, because she did in fact deliberately sink a few lines of Kay’s code into the program in the hopes that this is exactly what he would think. She carefully arranges her face into mild interest as she watches him work through her code - and considering how quickly she slapped this together, she’s more than a little proud of how long it’s taking him to resolve it.

He works on the puzzle until they get to the market, and then he focuses on keeping an eye out while Jyn grabs a few groceries. She moves quickly, mostly to keep him from thinking too hard about what she’s picking up, but also because she can see Cassian’s hand idly reaching up to tap his datapad and then falling again as he refocuses on the environment around him. It’s the only sign that some part of his mind is still preoccupied with the strange message, but Jyn marks it as a point in her favor on the scoreboard he doesn’t know is running.

He puts off messing with the code again long enough to change out of the obnoxious business clothes in the hotel, but then to her secret delight, he picks it right back up as Jyn putters around in the kitchen, putting away her groceries and pretending to make herself lunch. Mostly, though, she's watching him from the corner of her eye. It occurs to her that this is also a good moment to put in some prep work for a follow up objective, so while he’s distracted, she holds up a small can for him to see. “Picked you up some new cleanser,” she says casually. “Your bottle was getting empty. It’s here on the table.”

Cassian nods. “Thanks,” he says distantly, still focused on the chunk of code he’s dismantling. She turns away quickly, in case he looks up and catches her expression. She’s not particularly hungry, but if it takes him more than an hour to solve the code, she might have to go over there and help. In the meantime, she makes herself a sandwich and pretends to be lost in the view out the window.

At last, he holds the datapad up and tilts his head quizzically.

“Problem?” Jyn calls, leaning against the counter and crossing her ankles. Perfectly nonchalant. Totally innocent.

“It’s a list of foodstuffs,” he replies absently, and then shakes his head. “It’s a recipe.” A pause. “It’s _my_ recipe.”

She stuffs the sandwich in her mouth and takes a huge bite to hide any accidental reaction.

Cassian rises from the little couch and walks into the kitchen, “Why would Kay send me a heavily encrypted modified version of my own recipe for _sopaipa_?”

Jyn makes a little show of swallowing her sandwich bite to buy a few seconds. “Modified?” Damn, she must have gotten something wrong with the recipe. She’d been working purely from memory, and he’s only made them a couple of times. Hopefully it isn’t wildly inaccurate -

“The recipe is right,” Cassian answers her unspoken question, and she fights to keep her shoulders from dropping in relief. It’s wasted effort, though, because Cassian is frowning down at the datapad screen again. “But the…language is off. Not worded the way I would expect Kay to write it.” He raises his head to look at her again, and she can see the gleam of suspicion in his eyes.

She shrugs, thinking fast, because the slightest hesitation on her side now will give the whole game away before she even starts. “Another code?” She ventures.

It works; Cassian’s brow furrows and he looks back down, accepting the possibility. “Could be. I have no idea what, though. Or why he would send it _now._ ”

“Maybe he’s bored.” Jyn sets her barely-eaten sandwich down and flicks her fingers towards the datapad as if she’s just had an idea. “So, _sopaipa_ for dinner, then?”

Cassian snorts, and then seems to reconsider. “I suppose there’s no reason not to. Do we even have everything we would need?”

Jyn almost answers, _sure we do_ , but catches herself at the last second because she doesn’t want him to guess that she’s already checked, and bought what they were missing at the market this afternoon. Instead, she shrugs again and watches as he rifles through the cupboards and pulls out the simple ingredients they need. “Everything except for…” he scans the kitchen, spots the honey on the high shelf, conveniently just over where Jyn is standing. He thwarts her, though, merely pointing up at it as if to mark it for later, and starts measuring out his other ingredients. She folds her arms and glowers at his back, wiping her expression clean when he glances over his shoulder at her. “Pour the oil into the pan for me?”

“You know, the last time I tried to help you cook,” she reminds him a touch petulantly as she fishes out a pan and the bottle of cooking oil he indicates, “you threw me out of the kitchen.”

“As I recall,” he replies mildly, reaching around her back to grab a spoon from the drawer by her hip, “you were less “helping” and more “stealing” the food I was trying to cook.”

She shrugs, unrepentant. “Tasting.”

Cassian flips the spoon over her head and catches it in his opposite hand neatly. Showoff. “Thieving,” he says pointedly, but his now free hand runs down the curve of her hip before he pulls back and picks up the bowl of flour mix. “And I didn’t _throw_ you anywhere.”

“Carried, threw,” Jyn shrugs. “Same thing.”

He grunts in disagreement, but clearly he remembers that particular event with the same warmth Jyn does, because the laugh lines around his eyes deepen, and the tension in his shoulders is all but gone.

Jyn watches him closely as he works, but he seems properly absorbed in what he’s doing. She’s a little out of position now, but before she can work out how to casually sidle back over, Cassian flicks a finger up toward the honey and says, “Can you get that down?”

Shit. Outmaneuvered. Jyn purses her lips and hums the affirmative, but all she does is walk over and stand next to it again. For a moment she almost gives up, just climbs up on the counter and fetches the stupid jar like a grown up. She’s more or less achieved what she wanted; Cassian is relaxed, focused, not buried in work or pacing restlessly around the enclosed spaces, and definitely not out clinging to the slippery cliffs. It’s not quite the victory she wanted, but it’s good enough. Isn’t it?

The window over the kitchen sink looks out at the wide balcony, and when she glances through it, she can see the roiling white cloud cover tinged in the gentle pink of late afternoon. The craggy stone of the cliffside is also edged in the same pale color, outlining the precarious handholds and steep drop.

Oh, hells. Why not?

She stands under the honey jar and waves her arm vaguely in the direction of the shelf, mostly just so Cassian won’t notice that she doesn’t even try. Then she growls low and irritated in her throat, and turns. “Can’t reach. You get it.” She makes a show of stepping forward slightly, as if she means to walk around him and grab the pan, trading tasks with him. Cassian, still not entirely paying attention, falls for it; he turns and steps close, reaching up over her head and shifting to the side so she can pass. The move stretches him out in front of her, one hand balancing him against the counter edge as the other rises up over his head, his chin tilted up and exposing his throat, his body completely open and vulnerable. Trusting.

Jyn grins, darts forward, and presses a hard, open-mouth kiss to the base of his throat, directly over a spot she knows is particularly sensitive for him. At the exact same moment, she reaches around and rakes her nails down his back from his shoulder blades to his hips, her body rolling tight all along the lines of his.

Cassian startles, his breath hitching and his balance thrown. He catches himself against the counter, but Jyn doesn’t stay to watch the rest of his reaction, already slipping around him like a wraith and grabbing the sizzling pan. She resolutely does not look back, poking at the frying _sopaipa_ with the spoon as if nothing of any interest has just happened.

“Hey,” Cassian says from behind her, sounding just a little bit breathless. (For a brief moment, she thinks she hears the swallowed sound of her name on his lips, as if he almost broke mission protocol and called for her, which is ridiculous and maybe even scary, but she allows herself a little indulgence in the thought, anyway).

“Hm?” She clumsily shoves one of the lumpy things over, probably a little sooner than she should, judging by how the dough stretches around the spoon. “Is that the right color?” She prods at the turned sopaipa.

Cassian is quiet a moment longer, then she hears the scrape of the honey jar as he pulls it down. “Too pale,” he says softly. To her delight, he steps up behind her and winds his arms under hers, splaying one hand against her belly to fit her neatly against him, plucking the spoon from her fingers with the other. “Stop stabbing them.”

She huffs, offended. “When I _stab_ something, buddy,” she mutters. “There’s a lot more damage than that.”

Cassian hums in agreement, or maybe just to placate her; his lips are against the back of her neck, though, so she decides she doesn’t really care.

Dinner that night is a quick affair, but they find other enjoyable ways to keep themselves occupied for the evening, and when Jyn curls up on Cassian’s chest with his heartbeat steady under her ear, she decides to mark the first move in her game as a win.

Her dreams are full of surging white seas that whisper endlessly around her, muffling the distant thunder of a terrible battle she can see happening far above her. She clings to the tower, resting her cheek against the warm metal, and listens to the rush of the waves.

The next morning, Cassian slides out of bed and walks into the ‘fresher an hour before dawn. Jyn rolls over and picks up her datapad, one eye on the door as she brings up Phase Two, and hits send just as the ‘fresher door begins to open. Jyn closes her eyes halfway and moves with fake sluggishness, as if she’s only half awake and just checking the chrono on the datapad. The message is on a time-release. There’s no way he will associate her lazy chrono check with its arrival. She drops the ‘pad clumsily on top of her pack and stretches, deliberately ignoring Cassian and enjoying the tug and pull of her muscles.

He stands framed in the ‘fresher door, watching her. Directly across from him, on the other side of the bed, his jacket hangs near the bedroom door, an indistinct shape in the dim grey light.

Jyn sighs, lets the stretch go, and flops out across the bed, her arms and legs sprawled in a decidedly undignified pose. Feels nice, though. Bed’s too soft, but clean and warm. Nobody around but Cassian. No threats outside. It isn’t her ideal life or anything, but she could kind of get used to this.

“Hey,” Cassian says, walking closer and prodding at her arm. “Bed hog.”

For all her playacting, she is genuinely tired, so she almost ruins it by shooting back _I thought you were leaving_ , but she catches it at the last second and simply smirks at him. “You moved,” she says, eyes still half closed.

He arches an eyebrow at her – and then glances over her at his jacket. Jyn’s breath stills in her lungs, muscles tense.

Cassian sits on the side of the bed and leans over, kissing her collarbone.

Jyn’s thoughts short-circuit, derailed by the unexpected tenderness in his touch. He trails his mouth up her throat, to her cheek, her mouth, his hands slipping under her loose shirt and up her bare sides. He traces patterns over her ribs and around the sensitive undersides of her breasts, and Jyn arches against his touch as warmth rushes through her.

He slips his hands around her back as she winds her arms around his shoulders, pulling each other closer as he deepens the kiss and Jyn closes her eyes and lets him tug her gently up from the bed and half into his lap –

His datapad buzzes, loud and insistent. Cassian jumps in surprise, and Jyn glares over his shoulder at his pack for half a second before her brain catches back up to her. Wait, is that…?

Cassian sighs and lets her go, walking over to pick up the datapad. Even from her angle, Jyn can see the code that flashes over his screen, filling it. Cassian’s eyes sharpen, a wrinkle of concentration forming between his eyebrows, and she knows she’s lost him to the puzzle. _Shite._ Played herself, that time, didn’t she?

“This is from –“ Cassian clamps his mouth shut before he says the name _Mon Mothma_ out loud, though he’s clearly surprised at the realization. Jyn’s a little surprised, too; she did intentionally use certain speech patterns and phrases the Senator commonly used (well, technically not a Senator, but she insisted on the title anyway), but she hadn’t expected him to pick up on them so fast. Maybe she had gotten a little too self-satisfied yesterday, and not checked today’s work as carefully. _Sloppy, Erso. Sloppy_.

Cassian sits back down on the end of the bed with his back to her, tapping at the ever-shifting code. Jyn checks the chrono – forty-five minutes until they have to leave. If he is going to do any climbing, the window for it is rapidly closing.

He doesn’t move, except for his fingers on the screen. Just to be sure, Jyn crawls down to the end of the bed and peers over his shoulder. “That one looks different,” she murmurs, as if she’s never seen it before.

“Different programming language,” he agrees absently. “Different variation in the…hm. Kay’s message was a query-response puzzle, block ciphers and missing data inputs. This one is a reaction-response puzzle…” he trails off, but his fingers stop moving too, leaving him staring at the datapad motionless. She’s not sure if he’s just deep in thought about the puzzle itself, or if he’s mentally picking at the strange circumstances around it.

Just to make sure, she takes a risk. She gives a big, showy yawn, and props her chin on his shoulder. “So it rewrites itself whenever you enter the wrong passcode. Looks like lots of passcode checkpoints, too.”

“Yes,” Cassian turns his head enough that his cheek brushes hers. “Interesting. But not the standardized message system we set up before we came here. This is…unofficial.”

Jyn hums, as if she’s still groggy, or perhaps just not impressed with the mystery before them (actually, she’s very impressed, both at her excellent code and the fact that he’s sussed out so much of it in just a few minutes – but he doesn’t need to know that). She considers what she should say next. _Maybe it’s another one from Kay_ is too risky, challenging him to think about the real sender. _Looks like it will take you awhile_ is suspicious too, because if she didn’t know what this was about, she would definitely be intrigued by the coding puzzle and not suggesting that he solve it alone.

“Send me a copy,” she says at last. “I can screw with it on the way to the Academy.”

Cassian taps the datapad screen to dismiss the message and open the chrono, and she feels him still under her chin as he realizes they only have about twenty-five minutes until departure time. “Better keep it contained to this datapad,” he says, shaking his head. “In case it’s malicious. But here,” he stands up, shoves the datapad into her hands. “You can give it a shot.”

Jyn takes the datapad and considers it gravely, pursing her lips and humming. _Yes, yes, mm-hm, very interesting, look at this code I have never in my life seen before. Don’t look up and meet his eyes. Don’t look up and meet his eyes. Fascinating foreign code, big mystery, no idea what this is all about._

She keeps up the charade until Cassian closes the ‘fresher door behind him, and then she tiptoes out into the kitchen and heads straight for the gift basket. It’s touchy work, fishing out what she needs without ripping any of the stupid bows or crinkling the fancy plastic wrap, and she has to prod a few of the other items delicately so they cover the empty space around the item she extracts. It takes her way too long, actually, and she only just makes it back into the bedroom and into her work clothes by the time Cassian walks back out.

Her hair is still in disarray and her shoes are discarded somewhere on the other side of the room; she sees him mark both and lifts her chin, mind racing for some casual thing to say that will brush off her tardiness.

“Any luck?” he nods at the datapad.

Jyn blinks, and then affects a grouchy scowl. “No,” she grumbles, happy to imply that messing with the stubborn code has kept her from prepping for the op, and stomps into the ‘fresher. Cassian doesn’t laugh as she passes him, but she catches him running his hand over his mouth to hide a smile.

“A master of codework,” he murmurs as she brushes past, too low for any possible bug to pick up.

Jyn glowers at him and shuts the ‘fresher door, and then lets herself smile a little as soon as she’s clear. _Well, since you mention it_ , she thinks at him, then shakes her head, and reaches into her shirt. She’d been watching closely, but she never saw his eyes flick down to the slightly awkward way she held her arm against her side, keeping the can hidden inside her shirt from flopping forward and making a distinct shape in the cloth.

She has to move fast, so it’s a good thing she scouted the terrain yesterday. She finds what she’s looking for in his toiletry bag immediately (he’s so neat, of course he put the new bottle of cleanser in the exact same spot he had stored the old one), and she takes a moment to compare the bottle from the bag with the one in her shirt. To her immense satisfaction, she got the scale and the colors on the label almost perfectly. If she pulls this off, she really is a flipping genius, she’ll cop to it.

When she’s done setting up Phase Two, she hides the evidence and rushes to clean her teeth, throw her hair into a severe bun (the tight style hides that she hasn’t actually combed it), and get her eyeliner on without stabbing herself in the face. All told, she’s almost twelve minutes in the ‘fresher before she finally comes out.

Cassian lifts his head from the datapad where she can see him working through the puzzle, and looks very pointedly at the chrono. Jyn keeps her face stony, and marches out of the room. His amusement fades, replaced with concern, and she internally winces. She over-played it again, damnit, and now he’s back to thinking something’s wrong. She’s so much better at this when the mark isn’t…well, isn’t _him_.

Cassian catches up to her at the door, and they walk in silence up the path to the shuttle docks. _Alright, Erso. Head on straight. Enemy territory. Mission objectives_.

They spend most of the day watching a really boring (and absolutely infuriating) demonstration on a new “age-reduction” surgery technique that costs thousands of credits and uses up a ridiculous amount of high-grade bacta just to reduce neck wrinkles on one wealthy jackass. Or at least, Željko watches the whole of the demonstration, nodding with interest and asking intelligent questions about procedure, safety regulations, and of course, pricing in various systems. Ivica fidgets with her hair and makes multiple visits to the ‘fresher to “powder her nose” (whatever the hells that means, Cassian says it and Jyn smiles blandly as the supervisor winks and directs her down the hall to the Ladies’ Refresher). Jyn finds two unlocked consoles and seven with the most piddling password locks in the galaxy, and fills a datachip with Imperial account numbers for various medical supply retailers. With this, the Alliance can probably snag a few hundred million credits worth of medical equipment before anyone cottons on to the unauthorized purchases and the banks shut the accounts down. Maybe she and Cassian will even end up posing as some of these people, buying out shipments of goods and vanishing into the ether with them.

One op at a time, Jyn.

She shows Cassian the take as soon as they are back in the bungalow and finished with a routine bug sweep. He agrees with her about the possible future op, and helps her code the account data so it looks like a file full of vacation photos. They use images hauled in from the holonet, running an algorithm through popular social media sites to find real tourists’ posted images and compiling them into a fake digital scrapbook. Coding in the data to the images takes only a little longer, but has to be done individually, by hand, and her back aches a little by the time they are done. It’s easy but tedious work, and she’s so grateful for his help that she forgets all about the message from ‘Mothma’ until she’s tucked away her coded holo album. She expects Cassian to get up and pace around, maybe make something to eat, but instead he leans back and props his datapad on his knee, the screen filling with colorful symbols.

“Still haven’t worked it out?” Jyn asks, keeping her tone light and curious.

“It’s a good one,” he says simply. He doesn’t look up at her, not even out of the corners of his eyes (she checks), but there’s something a little too knowing about the way he says it. Jyn bites her lip, stops herself from jiggling her foot impatiently under the table.

“I’ll probably have it before dinner time,” he says, propping his ankle on his opposite knee, the very picture of casual composure.

“Okay,” she shrugs and gets up from the table. ( _Nice try, Andor_ , she thinks wryly, because clearly his current working theory is that the game is about _recipes_ , and she’s not about to give him any hints one way or another). “We’ve got those fish rolls. Want that?”

 “Uncooked fish is a health hazard,” Cassian says darkly.

She rolls her eyes. “Not if it’s prepared right.”

“And you trust the people who made those?”

“In a fancy tourist place like this? Sure.”

“Your stomach,” he shrugs. “Your call.”

“Right,” she says loudly. “Nice fish rolls for me, dry sandwich for you.”

“Maybe not,” he says a touch smugly as the datapad beeps in his hands. She turns around in time to see the screen clear, Cassian watching her over the top with a faintly challenging smirk on his face. She lifts her eyebrows and waits.

A short sentence pops up, and his smirk vanishes.

Jyn turns back to the pantry as naturally as she can, trying not to look like she’s whipping around to hide her own laugh. “Problem?”

“Clean up thoroughly,” Cassian says slowly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jyn demands over her shoulder, huffing with offense.

“That’s what it says,” Cassian holds up the datapad so she can see the screen. “Clean up thoroughly.”

If she pulls this off, Jyn thinks as she arranges her face into an appropriate expression of confusion and surprise, she’s going to give herself a commendation in her records for superior acting abilities in a high-risk environment. “Huh,” she says. “Clean up what?”

“I…” Cassian sets the datapad back down on the table and stares at it. “I have no idea.”

Jyn nods, and thunks down a plate in front of him.

Cassian blinks at the thin sandwich in front of him, a piece of cheese sloppily falling out the side, and then his mouth twitches and he looks up at her through his eyelashes. “Really?”

“I cooked,” she says righteously. “You get dishes.”

“This,” Cassian points at the sad sandwich, “is not cooking.”

In response, Jyn takes a huge bite of her fish roll, never breaking eye contact.

He coughs, hiding his mouth in his fist to cover the smile. Jyn chews placidly, unimpressed.

“Alright,” Cassian shoves the datapad away from himself and pulls the sandwich closer. Jyn starts to walk around him, but just as she passes, he reaches out and catches her neatly around the waist, tilting back in his chair so far that she has to lunge to hook her arm under his shoulders. The sneaky son of a bantha bitch has the audacity to grin at her as she does it, too, and uses her weight plus his momentum to spin the chair on its back legs while pulling her down. It ends with his chair turned ninety-degrees from the table, Jyn sprawled in his lap because she can’t catch herself without slamming her knee into his side. Her fish roll wobbles on the plate, and he catches it before it splatters to the floor.

“That,” she growls at him, “is not funny.”

In response, he reaches around her, picks up the fish roll, and takes a bite, never breaking eye contact.

Jyn narrows her eyes. “Right.” She waits for him to swallow, so he won’t choke, and then she lunges.

An hour or so later, Cassian runs his hand down her bare spine and sighs. “Shower?”

“Mm,” she stretches her arms up over her head and arching her back up into his palm, wordlessly encouraging him to repeat the move. He obliges, and then climbs up from the bed and walks into the ‘fresher, leaving the door ajar in clear invitation. She’s so sated and comfortable that for a moment, she actually forgets Phase Two. Then she hears the hiss of the water snapping on, and the sound jolts her back to herself.

Cassian’s face is turned up to the spray when she slips into the ‘fresher and opens the shower door. He blinks through the water at her, and holds out his hand to pull her into the stream. He’s unfairly beautiful like this, she decides, the water plastering back his hair as neatly as if he’d intentionally styled it that way, rivulets running down his lean body in intricate patterns that make her fingers itch to trace them.

She refrains, choosing instead to scrub at her eyes, cleaning off the last of Ivica’s precise eye makeup. She considers and then rejects pulling out her own cleanser first, because he might just use hers, and she would be hard pressed to explain why he should get his own. On the other hand, if she doesn’t keep him at least a little distracted, he might notice the trap before he springs it.

“Hey,” she says, just as he reaches up for his hanging bag, “I called home the other day.”

It works – Cassian still reaches into the bag to fumble for his cleanser, but his attention swings to her. “Everyone okay?”

“Yeah,” she leans in close and finally indulges in chasing some of those watery patterns on his skin with her fingers. He kisses her cheek and then pops open the bottle, casually spraying a large chunk of the white foam onto his hand.

Jyn bites her cheek to keep from laughing, and steps back just enough so that he won’t get any on her when he rubs the stuff over his chest and neck.

And then he freezes. “What…what is that smell?”

She raises her eyebrows, as innocent as she can. “What smell?”

“It’s…sweet?” For some reason, Cassian turns to look at the shower door, and then the shower head, and then, Force save her, he turns in a circle like a confused dog chasing its tail. Jyn bites down harder on the inside of her cheek. _Don’t laugh, don’t laugh_. “You don’t smell that?”

She makes a show of sniffing. “Hm. Yeah. Think so. What is it?”

He shakes his head, absently reaches for his cleanser again, since the first burst has now run down his sides to the drain as he looked around. He squirts another glob into his hand, and Jyn turns her face into the spray abruptly, closing her eyes and pretending the water is responsible for the scrunching of her nose and the slight quiver of her lips.

“Wait, what - ?” She turns back around in time to see him staring at his hand, the white foam all over his chest, stomach, and face now. He still has his hand near his chin, frozen in the act of rubbing it into his beard. A little clump is melting in the water near the corner of his lip – the taste is probably what finally tipped him off. “Is this…what…?”

Jyn raises her eyebrows, waiting. _Don’t laugh, damnit, don’t laugh_. (She is definitely getting a commendation for stellar acting, after this).

“Cream?” Cassian turns his hand over, and then reaches to the little shelf in the shower wall and picks up the can of his cleanser. “Is this _sweet cream?_ ” And then he burst into an irate stream of curses in Alderaanian, shaking his hand off and sending cream flying all over the shower.

The giggle breaks out of her before she can stop it, and Jyn slaps a hand over her face as Cassian turns the can over and displays the black and blue label of the little cleanser can – which is, in fact, a very similar looking black and blue label for sweet dessert cream.

Cassian looks from the can to her, and she sees the bewilderment shift to suspicion. She shakes her head and points to the can. “You grabbed the wrong one.”

“What?”

“I picked that up, with the cleanser,” she explains, “remember? The groceries yesterday? I gave you the new cleanser while you were on the couch, because the old one was getting empty?”

She sees the recognition in his eyes. “Yes,” he agrees slowly, “You set it down on the table.”

“Right next to the other groceries,” she shrugs. “Guess you were distracted when you picked it up.”

“I don’t remember the other groceries on the table.” Cassian narrows his eyes, squints at the can again, and then she sees him take the line. “I guess I have been a little…” he sighs. “Unfocused. Jittery. It’s this place,” he confesses softly, and Jyn’s laughter fades at the rueful, uncertain tone of his voice. “Everything here is so clean, so unmarked. Quiet.”

“It is…” she hunts for the right words, but this has never been her arena, so in the end she can only echo him. “Quiet.”

“Too much time to think,” he murmurs, still staring at the sweet cream can.

“Hm.” Jyn swipes a finger through the cream clotting in his beard, and sticks it in her mouth. “Food’s good, though,” she says mildly.

Cassian laughs. It’s an odd sound, a little unsteady, as if she’s wrenched it out of him, as if he’s surprised to find himself laughing at all. Then he shakes his head, tosses the can from one hand to the other and holds it up for her to see. “Better go get the cleanser from the cupboard,” he tells her. “Wouldn’t want to accidentally put that on your dessert.”

Jyn nods and smiles at him, though in the back of her head she curses, because she hid the real cleanser can under the ‘fresher sink. Rookie mistake, she should have put it in the cupboard with the food as if it were a real mix up. She’s just working out how she can smuggle the cleanser from the ‘fresher to the kitchen without him noticing (late night trip to the kitchen to get a snack?) when Cassian suddenly presses down on the dispenser, spraying a thick stream of white foam directly onto her chest. The cream is shockingly cold on her water-heated skin, and Jyn yelps in surprise, flinching back.

“Not much left in there,” he muses. “Seems a shame to waste it.”

“Right,” Jyn says, glowering as she swipes the cream from her skin with one hand. And then she lunges.

They wind up needing another shower – frankly, this plan of hers is turning out to be one of the best she’s ever had, clearly she and her genius need to spend more time with the Operational Analysis and Strategy Team in Command. At this rate, she might win the damn war by New Year.

In the meantime, Cassian loops his arm around her shoulders and pulls her in tight against his chest as they sleep, his heartbeat steady and comforting in her ear, and that night she sleeps like a rock, dreamless and content.

In the morning, Cassian’s datapad buzzes forty minutes before they have to leave for the Academy. Jyn keeps her eyes closed and listens to him roll over, fumbling in the grey predawn light to pick it up. And then, in a voice less slurred by sleep than hers would probably be, he says out loud, “What the hells does _he_ want?”

She stays very still, concentrating on breathing slow and even.

Cassian is quiet for a few moments behind her, and then she hears the datapad click against the bedside table, and he rolls back to curl around her, tucking her body up against his. “Jyn,” he whispers directly into her ear, and she shivers a little in response. “ _Jyn_ ,” he whispers again, voice low and gentle. “Why the fuck is Luke Skywalker sending me coded messages?”

She takes a fraction of a second too long to answer, she knows she does, but she hopes that her confused mumble sounds groggy enough to excuse her. “Not him, probably,” she says at last, talking mostly into her pillow. “Someone using the name to get your attention. Keyword?”

“A possibility.” He shifts against her back, pressing his nose into the curve of her neck. His beard scratches at the sensitive skin there, and Jyn twitches a little, but she’s so invested in appearing half-asleep still that she doesn’t dare shift away. Not that she really wants to – he's comfortable enough to make up for the too-soft bed. This is the most sleep she’s gotten in…years, probably. She wants to take advantage of it as much as she can.

“Jyn,” Cassian whispers in her ear again (she’s not sure if he’s breaking name protocols because his mouth is literally brushing the shell of her ear and it’s highly unlikely any bug could ever pick up so soft a sound, or if he’s also still half-asleep and just speaking on instinct. Probably the former). “How did Mothma know I would need to…clean up?”

She hums an ‘I don’t know,’ shrugging one shoulder and keeping her eyes determinedly closed.

This time he’s silent so long that she thinks he probably drifted back to sleep, and she’s halfway there herself when he shifts to kiss the nape of her neck and murmur against the skin, “I’m sorry.”

Jyn snaps back awake in an instant, her heart skipping in her chest. He must feel it, or perhaps her feels her breathing catch, or her muscles suddenly tense, because he runs his hand soothingly up and down her side, body still curled around hers, holding her against him. “You haven’t -“ She has to lick her suddenly dry lips. “You don’t owe me an apology.”

He sighs heavily, his breath ghosting across the back of her neck and through her hair. “No?”

She waits, but he lets it go, and they lay in silence together until the chrono chimes, twenty minutes until they have to leave. Cassian sits up, and then tugs her shoulder until she rolls on her back. He leans down and kisses her, a gentle press of his lips to hers, gets up and heads into the ‘fresher.

Jyn clears her throat. “Recommend you use soap, this time,” she calls after him.

Cassian pauses at the door to shoot her a look, and then closes the door as she chuckles into her pillow.

The datapad is still on, at his side of the bed. Jyn leverages herself up on her elbow and checks – the scrambled image is instantly recognizable to her even cut up into tiny, oddly-shaped fragments and shifted around. But then, she has an unfair advantage.

Cassian doesn’t mess with the coded image before they rush off to the Academy. It’s their last day there, so the supervisors are working harder than ever, desperate to get them to make some agreement for the products or services they are offering. Jyn keeps her mouth shut, smiling blankly and darting off to the “Ladies' Fresher” at every opportunity, and filling her pockets with the various bits of interesting scrip, a few holocopies of files left lying out, and the contents of a high-security vault full of genetic research into stormtrooper body-modifications. Cassian strings along the supervisors the whole time with a pleasant smile and charming jokes, until at last he cheerfully signs a series of contracts that have a ton of high-order language but ultimately boil down to a promise to try and sell his own supervisors on these products and services. It sounds like a load of banthashit to Jyn, but the Academy researchers seem more than pleased, and they escape for the last time with reams of stolen data and a hearty handshake from the head supervisor.

Their ride off the planet won’t show up until morning, though, so Jyn and Cassian head back to their bungalow and change into their real clothes, Jyn tucking her various knives back into her sleeves, boots, and belt with palpable relief. For the first time in almost two weeks, she feels like she’s fully dressed again. No more soft-toed shoes or pinching collared shirts, no more precise eyeliner and neatly pinned hair.

Cassian cinches his holster to his side with an expression of equal satisfaction, even though his blaster stays hidden in his pack for now. Just in case anyone is watching. He still looks happier to have the holster in it’s correct place, a feeling she definitely shares. Her happiness dims, however, when he picks up his jacket from the hook at the door. Without a word, he walks out of the bedroom, out of the bungalow, and onto the wide balcony.

Jyn’s heart twists in her chest as he turns and looks up at the cliff face, his jacket dangling from his hand. When he turns and throws it over the nearby chair, her heart drops straight into her gut.

Then Cassian sits down.

She shuts her eyes hard and opens them again, but she’s not seeing things. Cassian is lounging casually on the chair, one booted foot propped up, his datapad balanced against his thigh. She moves closer, peering at him through the open door, and sees the scrambled image from her – from "Luke Skywalker’s" – message. Cassian begins to work his way through the puzzle, his other foot tapping idly on the stone balcony floor. Past him, the white clouds swirl peacefully under the afternoon sun around the towering pillars of jagged stone, and the vivid green moss is so bright is almost seems to glow in the sunlight. It’s beautiful, and quiet, and Jyn finds herself leaning on the doorjamb, just watching the way the wind tugs at his shirt sleeves as he works, how the white clouds seem to highlight his dark hair.

His hands move quick and sure over the image, connecting faint lines and subtle color patterns. She watches his fingers move, mesmerized by the easy grace of them, by the slight discoloration of his callouses and the faint scar across the heel of his right hand, by the quick confident way he solves the complex puzzle before him –

Wait.

The really, really quick way he solves the puzzle. Shite, he’s almost halfway done with it, and she hasn’t even set up Phase Three! He’s figuring it out much faster than she expected.

Jyn clears her throat. “Hey, gonna do some laundry before we go, okay?”

“Sounds good,” he nods, not looking up. “Better here than wait until we’re back home.”

Jyn makes a point of moving at normal speed as she walks back into the bungalow and gathers up their clothes from both packs. They haven’t brought much, relying on the interchangeability of suit pieces to disguise that they really only have a couple business outfits between them. Even with their “after business hours” disguises, she can hold all their clothes in one arm if she’s careful. The small load of laundry presents a bit of a problem, now that she’s thinking about it. For this to really work, she’ll need a lot more…poof.

She dumps the clothes on the bed and strips the sheets. The comforter. The pillowcases. Hells, the pillows, while she’s at it. The combined bedding does the trick, giving her a huge armload that she can barely maneuver through the door and through the kitchen, to the small laundry room in the back of the bungalow. She crams the lot into the laundry sonic box and sets it on flash-clean. Then she ducks back out to the kitchen, checking through the window that Cassian is still sitting on the balcony, his back to her, head bent over the datapad.

The twine is still under the sink, right where she left it. Jyn swipes it and moves quickly back into the laundry room. The load still has three more minutes, so she has to stand there, fidgeting with the twine and trying not to snarl at the stupid, slow box. Cassian was already two thirds of the way done with the image puzzle when she checked out the window, and it will take her at least ten minutes to set up the trap. Luxury appliances, her ass, this was taking _forever_ –

The sonic dings. Jyn throws it open and drags out the clothes and bedding, struggling a little to pull free the comforter, which seems to have puffed up in the sonic. Vaguely, she wonders when was the last time anyone washed that damn thing, then decides she’s happier not knowing. It’s clean now, anyway, and twice as fluffy. Perfect.

She dumps the laundry on the floor, then unwinds a length of the twine. There’s no ladder and she doesn’t dare go out and drag in a chair from the kitchen, so she braces one foot on the sonic box and the other on a little decorative lip carved into the stone wall. She heaves herself up, balancing a little precariously about half a meter off the floor. From here, she can just reach the little decorative carved frescoes on the ceiling, and starts to carefully wind the twine around the protrusions. Once she’s got the “net” structured up here, she can balance the laundry, and then tie it off as she walks out the door.

This will give away the game, of course, but they are leaving soon, and she was only barely pulling it off anyway. Cassian just knows her too damn well, and even if he didn’t, he’s a perceptive bastard. He’d have her pinned sooner or later. At least this way, it will be on her terms, which counts as a win in her book.

And it will be fucking hilarious, to see his face when he walks into the laundry room under the instruction of “Luke Skywalker” and all these fluffy clothes and blankets and pillows rain down on his head and bury –

“What are you doing?”

To her eternal shame (and her resolute denial, later), Jyn lets out the most undignified squawk of her life, and plummets directly into the pile of laundry beneath her.

The folds of the fluffy comforter close over her head, and just to add insult to injury, something that feels like a pillow thumps onto her face.

She thrashes, and breaks the surface in time to see Cassian standing with his datapad in one hand, his face perfectly blank. The screen of the datapad shows an image of a complicated tangle of multi-shaded grey and white circuits worked into an intricate set up. In retrospect, she probably shouldn’t have chosen something he would find so familiar. Flowers, she thinks grouchily. Next time it will be bouquets of flowers. Or candy-colored tooka cats. Something too cutesy to be borne. That will teach him to be so good at picture puzzles.

Cassian holds up the datapad so she can better see the completed puzzle, and the simple line of text that popped up underneath it when he was done. “Our friend,” he says in an even tone, as if he is discussing the weather, “told me to ‘check the load.’ I thought maybe he meant our…results, from this trip.” He cocks his head at her. “But you were doing laundry.”

Jyn folds her arms. She’s down, but she’s not beat yet. “And?”

“I never realized so many people we knew were expert coders,” he says, his face still totally neutral.

“We know many smart people,” she grinds back at him, subtly trying to kick her legs free from the comforter without drawing attention to it.

Cassian looks up at the ceiling, at her half-finished webbing slung between the fresco carvings. “Nice net,” he remarks, idly slipping his datapad back to his belt.

His total lack of reaction is starting to get under her skin, which is probably exactly what the bastard is aiming for, so she stamps down on it and works her legs free of the blanket. “I have many talents,” she mutters, and rolls up to her feet.

Cassian steps forward just as she gets her weight under her, and his sudden proximity unbalances her again. She instinctively grabs at his shirt front to steady herself, and Cassian wraps his hands around her wrists to pin her hands there. “Why didn’t you just tell me,” he breathes into the narrow space between them. “Why didn’t you say…?”

But he doesn’t finish the question, his eyes dark, his mouth thinning out as he presses his lips together. He knows. He's guessed it. He doesn’t want to invoke the cliff out loud though. He doesn’t want to give weight to the ugly shape of their shared past. But too late, it’s there anyway, the wind outside whistling in echo of the fans in Scarif Tower, the warmth of the bungalow transmuting into the heat of the now-dead planet’s blaster-scorched air. Cassian opens his mouth again, then closes it, because he doesn’t need to say it. It’s there, between them.

Jyn feels the defeat sitting like a lump of stone in her stomach. There are shadows in his eyes and a catch of sorrow and regret in his voice. Despite her best efforts, she’s failed.

She drops her gaze and stares at her hands on his chest instead. Her eyes are not heavy, not blurring around the edges, because that’s ridiculous. It was just a little game to pass the time. The stakes were not that high.

“Hey,” Cassian’s hands tighten on her wrists. “Talk to me.”

She shrugs, letting irritation chase away the wet feeling in her eyes and carve at the heavy sense of defeat in her gut. “Just didn’t want to fuck it up,” she mutters. His frown deepens with confusion, and Jyn growls under her breath and yanks her hands out of his grip. She can’t step back, the laundry pile is still tangled around her feet, so she simply wraps her arms tight around her chest and glares at his chest.

“What does that mean?” he asks softly.

“I don’t want – “ the words catch in her throat, but she focuses on the seam of his shirt and forces them out anyway. “I don’t want you to associate every memory of me with pain. Every time I talk to you – “ she shakes her head, tries again. “If I’d asked – “ No, that’s not right, either.

 _Hells_ , her eyes feel heavy again. What is wrong with her? She clears her throat and opens her eyes wide, willing the absolutely stupid and unnecessary tears to dry up before they dare fall. “I don’t want to be some kind of anchor around your neck.”

Her voice cracks on the last word, to her disgust, and she clamps her mouth shut because that’s enough of _that._

Cassian hugs her.

Actually, that’s a bit of an understatement – he crushes her to him, his arms hard around her, one hand pressing the back of her head tight to his shoulder, his face buried in her neck. He hauls her so close that it momentarily lifts her from the floor, her toes just brushing through the laundry pile before he lets her weight settle again, mostly leaning against him.

“I don’t,” he says into her ear. “I don’t. You have never been a burden. I am lucky to have you with me. I am – I am so Force-damned lucky - ” He breaks into a stream of Alderaani then, his voice too muffled by her shoulder for her to pick out more than a few words. Jyn clings to him and closes her eyes, letting the sound of his voice wash over her, listening to the beat of his heart against her chest.

Eventually, he turns his head and presses his mouth against her ear, dropping his voice. “Jyn,” he says roughly, “Thank you.”

She swallows, finds her voice. “You don’t owe me thanks.”

He makes a strangled sound, something that could have been either a startled laugh or a cut off sob. “No?”

She shakes her head. “No.”

“Okay,” he replies after a long pause. His fierce grip on her relaxes, cradling her more than clutching. He drags his fingertips through her hair, pulling the loose bun a little askew. “Okay.”

Jyn swipes her eyes on his shirt, leaving small wet smudges that will dry in a few minutes and she will pretend were never there. He’ll let her. He always does. “So,” she says when her voice feels relatively steady again. “We good?”

This time it’s definitely a laugh, though his voice still sounds a little hoarse. “Yes. We are good.”

The relief sinks into her spine and eases the tension there, pushes away the shivery terror. Even the hard lump of defeat in her stomach feels a little lighter now. Sure, she still fucked it up in the end, but it sort of worked, anyway. He didn’t climb the cliff, the last few days. He didn’t pace around, or speak in sharp monosyllables. So it’s not the great victory she was hoping for, but it’s not a total loss, either.

“I do owe you something, though,” Cassian says, his thumb tracing small, gentle circles just under her ear as his fingers still comb gently through her hair.

Jyn settles her chin more comfortably on his shoulder. “What?”

Cassian twists sharply on his heel, and falls backwards. His grip drags her after him, and for a terrifying moment they are plunging weightless downward, Jyn’s heart pounding in her chest, her lungs heaving as she gasps, falling, falling, and Cassian beneath her, his bones exposed to the cruel steel of the tower.

And then they crash into the laundry pile, which _whuffs_ softly around them as their combined weight drives the air from the fluffy comforter and scatters the pillows and shirts around them.

Jyn opens her eyes and stares down at his completely calm face, at the lack of pain around his eyes and mouth, the loose comfort in his shoulders. It takes her brain a moment to make the connection – they were falling, they fell –

\- and they are fine.

Cassian brings his hands up and cups her face, studying her with sharp, observant eyes. She can tell the exact moment that he sees her understand, because his face relaxes into a genuine, full smile, the dimple on his cheek that she rarely gets to see flashing, real joy shining in his eyes. It makes her giddy, makes her brave, makes her so stupidly happy she doesn’t even know what to do with it all.

Fortunately, Cassian seems to have some idea, because he gently tugs her down, and kisses her until she stops thinking about towers and seas and wars that maybe can’t ever be won. It’s all still out there, she knows, but for the moment, just this one good moment, it’s far away, and insignificant.

“For the official record,” Cassian says when she comes up for air, “I won.”

“Shut up,” she replies, and captures his mouth again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I considered making "Mothma's message" a little more obscure, but I figure the weakest point of Jyn's plan would be in the words. So yeah, Cassian suspects her pretty early, confirms it halfway through, but he doesn't know what the endgame is, so he plays along. Plus, those "traps" really do catch him by surprise.
> 
> Belazura is indeed a planet where lots of wealthy people got very fancy medical procedures done. It was also a beautiful tourist resort. The mountains are much more "normal" in canon, but I decided that this particular area was a bit more rugged, and modeled it after the [Tianzi Mountains](https://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/hunan/zhangjiajie/tianzi-mountain.htm) in China. 
> 
> The Medical Academy is made up for this story, though.
> 
> All the names in here that aren't from canon are Croatian. Just because.


	9. it's just the place that changes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sort of a prompt from @moranice-solvej on tumblr, with whom I had a very engaging conversation about what Jyn and Cassian might do once the New Republic was declared and the war officially over. I meant to write out some thoughts on that, and then this happened instead. I'll try again another time.

The corridor of an office building turned political center/impromptu barracks is the last place Jyn really wants to be right now. She’s tired from a long day, cold from the brisk winds of Coruscant’s winter season, and tense from hours of waiting. Days of waiting. Months. In a way, _years_. The apartment corridor is brightly lit and half-full of people bustling in and out of the various rooms, even now, in the middle of the night. But that’s normal, in the upper echelons of Coruscant, particularly in the building that has been designated the Offices of Leia Organa. Jyn keeps her head up and her eyes straight ahead, moving at the same brisk pace of the New Republican Senator’s other aides. She’s not dressed in the uniform of Organa’s Diplomatic Corps (a robe in some hideous combination of orange, white, and purple that she understands was chosen for symbolism more than an appeal to good taste). She’s not wearing the newly minted official badge of the New Republic, either. But then, only a handful of Organa’s actual clerks and ambassadors and other paper-pushers necessary in a budding government are dressed in their formal best right now either. These are the living quarters assigned to the Senator’s entourage and staff, all parked directly underneath her personal quarters and offices. With things as chaotic and unsettled as they are right now, Organa wants all her people within a few minutes’ walk (and a few seconds’ dead run, if required). When the New Republic has been established for longer than a month, Jyn’s been told, things will probably calm down around here. People might even sleep from time to time.

 _I will face sleep when I face death_ , Saw grunts in her memory, his face half-hidden in shadow. _Unless the Empire reigns yet,_ he adds, the way he always did in the beginning, when he still had a glimmer of humor in him, _in which case, sleep must give up it's prize, for vengeance is a jealous lover._

Nine year old Jyn had thought that was a weird and slightly scary thing to say. Twelve year old Jyn had laughed sardonically with the rest of the squad, pretending to understand. Sixteen year old Jyn had spit on the ground when she remembered it, and forced the words from her memory. Twenty-one year old Jyn had recalled them again with sadness, when she dreamed of her mentor’s restless spirit roaming the shattered surface of an un-avenged Jedha. Twenty-seven year old Jyn wonders if the fall of the Emperor is enough to release Saw Gerrera from his desperate affair with vengeance, and grant him over to the arms of sleep at last. There is still a large contingent of Imperial forces out there, after all. Even after Endor. Even after Jakku. The Empire is formally dead – but whether or not it will stay that way is still uncertain.

She supposes she will have to wait, and see.

But for now, Organa’s office is perpetually busy, packed with people determined that the New Republic remain triumphant, the old Empire broken into tiny fragmants and ground into the forgotten dust beneath their heels. Everyone here is rushing around with their limbs loaded full of datapads, cramming food into their faces as they go, wearing whatever clothes they deemed clean enough as they stumbled on their way to the next crisis or priority project or diplomatic meeting. Hells, a sizable portion of them are still wearing the now-outdated uniform of the Alliance, even though officially, the paramilitary organization that fought the Empire for twenty-six long years is now defunct. But old habits die hard, and resources are still tight until the bean-counters can mark out who has what and where. So the hallway is liberally dotted with old brown and green uniforms, and even the occasional bright orange of a stray pilot come to do business with Senator Organa.

Which meant that Jyn, in her faded Alliance jacket and worn trousers, fits right in. No diplomat robes required. She has made the effort to comb all her unruly hair back into a neat bun, and her boots are new and shiny (the benefits of having a few friends in the quartermaster’s department), so she even somehow manages to look like even more like she belongs in a Senator’s entourage than some of the people who push past her. She also walks with direction and purpose, a trick that she long ago learned would grant her access and shed any suspicion from most busy organizations. _Look like you know what you’re doing_ , Cassian had shrugged at her, a smile playing around the corner of his mouth, _and people will generally leave you alone to do it._

The memory of Cassian’s smile - the amused tone of his voice, the relaxed set of his shoulders – makes Jyn’s heart twist a little in her chest. It's an old fear that comes bubbling back to the surface,  a fear she's mostly tamed back over the last six years, back now nearly as raw and terrifying as ever. Jyn swallows hard and walks just a little bit faster, reminding herself that this, like so many things, is different now. Raw, yes, terrifying, yes…but smaller, too. More healed around the edges. And with some help, manageable. In the back of her mind she hears Chirrut’s calm voice half-chanting over the growl of her tension, _in and out, little sister. In and out. Draw the breath in, push the breath out. As long as you breathe, there is hope. In and out_.

_In and out._

At the end of the corridor, the crowd tapers off a little, and a couple of alert-looking guards stand at a small checkpoint that severs the cross-hallway from the current one. Only higher-security personnel are allowed past this point, people who work with Senator Organa directly. It’s mostly people who worked with her in Alliance command, although there are a few lesser-known faces around. Jyn, at the moment, is pretending to be one of them. She doesn’t reach up to her ident badge to check that it’s still clipped to her jacket; that’s the sort of nervous tell that might alert the guards that something is off, and might bring a whole lot of trouble down on Jyn’s head. And Cassian’s. And _Organa’s_ , for that matter.

Jyn keeps her step brisk and her face calm as she strides up to the checkpoint. The closest guard turns and nods to her. “Good evening, Captain Hartenstine. Bit of a late shift?”

“Technically, it’s good morning,” the other guard corrects, tapping her chrono. “Seven minutes past midnight.”

The first guard rolls his eyes. “One of these days,” he tells Jyn in an exasperated tone of voice, “Vaness is going to lighten the hells up.”

“One of these days,” Ensign Vaness Ju echoes in the same tone, “Bosel is going to pay attention to details.”

“One of these days,” Jyn replies dryly as the two guards eye each other with companionable animosity, “I’m going to get through this checkpoint without you two sniping at each other.”

“Not in this lifetime, Captain,” Bosel grins at her good-naturedly, and lifts his ident scanner to aim at her badge. Jyn doesn’t tense up, because she never tenses up, because she coded this badge herself and she’s _damn_ good at what she does.

But there’s always that voice, in the back of her head, the one that sometimes sounds like Saw and sometimes like her mother, whispering, _if it doesn’t work, be ready to run_.

The scanner beeps cheerfully, and Bosel steps back out of her way. “Alright, Captain. Have a good,” he glances significantly at the other side of the checkpoint, “ _night_.”

_“Morning."_

“Thanks.” Jyn moves past them no slower and no faster than she walked up.

“And say hi to Commander Hartenstine!” Bosel calls after her.

Jyn gives him a perfunctory wave over her shoulder, and heads straight for the smallest door in the high-security corridor, the one tucked into the far back corner near at least two of the building’s emergency exits. Her ident badge swipes across the door’s security lock with the same cheerful beep, and she hustles inside before she can think too hard about it. Not that there’s anything to think about. It’s a normal night. As normal as nights get, at the moment.

The overhead lights are off in the apartment, just a couple digital chrono readouts glowing green around the small living space. There’s still plenty of light coming in from the large window on the far side of the apartment, the glittering lines and swirls of the mega-metropolis shimmering like currents in an ocean of stars against the black of night. Cassian is standing at the window, leaning one shoulder against the glass with his arms crossed, watching her walk in. The light from the hallway spills over her shoulder and slashes across his body in a golden line, but he keeps his head turned just enough that it only highlights one eye and the sharp edge of his cheekbone.

Jyn closes the door behind her, and the golden light snuffs out, leaving them in the glittering darkness together. Her eyes struggle to adjust to the darkness of the apartment. Cassian’s features are obscured, but his body is outlined by the city lights through the window. She wishes she could see his face, because the brief flash of light from the hallway had shown her nothing at all. She _can_ see that his body language is relaxed - although it’s the deliberate kind of relaxation, the kind that tells her he’s working at it.

Her heart seems to clench inside her chest again, and Saw’s growling voice scratches at her ear _. It’s going to happen. You know it will happen, my child. You must be prepared to face it._ Her mouth felt suddenly dry, her limbs leaden, her heart twisting again, and again, as if it has forgotten how to properly beat and is simply seizing inside her.

_In and out, little sister. In and out._

“You talked to Cracken.”

She’s proud at how even her voice comes out. It takes skill to be that calm in the face of her worst nightmare, and she’s worked hard to learn it.

“I did,” Cassian replies, not moving. “A few hours ago.”

Jyn nods, certain that he can see her better than she can see him. The same city lights that turn him into a featureless silhouette are shining directly on her face. Cassian seems to be studying her; whatever he sees makes his shoulders tighten subtly, his chin lower. She doesn’t know what that means, and isn’t sure she should try to guess.

Finally, he tilts his head, inviting her to come and stand by him at the window. Up close, she can see that his expression is carefully neutral. It does nothing for the tension winding ever tighter in her chest. A dozen half-formed sentences tumble in her head, but she can’t pick which one is the right one, can’t even begin to guess what he’s going to say now. So Jyn focuses on the glittering landscape outside the building, and waits.

“The Reconstruction Committee met again this morning,” Cassian tells her, offhand, disinterested. As if it has nothing to do with them. As if her whole life isn’t hanging in the balance. “They voted to dissolve and reform Alliance Intelligence. It’s now the New Republic Intelligence Service. Senator Organa has agreed, along with all the other former officers of the Alliance’s leadership, to dissolve any black ops units assigned to her staff under wartime conditions.”

 _It happened_ , Saw grates in her head. _It happened. Face it_.

“So it's official,” Jyn says. “The Hartenstines are now retired.”

“Yes.” Cassian clears his throat. “Your letter of commendation and thanks for your service are in your official netmail account.” He nods to the small console built into the wall by the kitchen, and then she catches the faintest of grins cross his shadowed face before he turns back to the window. “As are letters of commendation and thanks for service to Lieutenant Irinik, Sergeant Boudreaux, Staff Sergeant Howell, and Contractor Anfel Yari all in their corresponding accounts.”

“Damn,” Jyn shakes her head, biting back the laugh that bubbles up in her throat (it feels a little hysterical, and she’s not in the mood to risk letting that air between them, not just yet). “They really are cleaning house, huh?”

“So it seems.”

The silence that settles around them feels too…thick. Jyn hates it, so she opens her mouth and lets the first thing she can think of fly out. “But not Jyn Erso?”

Cassian doesn’t flinch, and it’s hard to say he goes still because he wasn’t moving to begin with. But she can feel the air freeze a little around him, which is worse than the thick, oppressive silence of before. She regrets the words immediately, of course she does, but she can’t chase them down and stuff them back into her dry mouth. She would, if she could, but she can’t. So she raises her chin and keeps her eyes on the lights outside, and braces herself for the blow.

But all Cassian says is, “No. Not her.”

For a moment she feels only relief that he hasn't snapped at her, or worse. And then her brain decides to wake the hells back up, and she bristles because _wait a damn second_. She turns sharply on her heel to face him, her uncertainty overwhelmed by the sudden, much more pressing fear that surges up inside her. “Does that mean Organa’s _unsealing our file?”_

Now Cassian does flinch, straightening away from the window and turning to meet her wide eyes. “ _No_ ,” he says quickly. “No, not that I’ve – no, Jyn. I’m sorry, I should have been more clear. The Scarif files are closed.” He reaches out and sets his hand on her shoulder, although the move is more tentative than usual. “They aren't going to tear that open again. It's - you're safe. We're safe. I'm- " he sighs. "Sorry.”

She shakes her head, more to clear it than to deny him anything, and just to make sure he knows that, she catches his wrist and holds his hand in place. “Yeah,” she breathes, the terror subsiding back into relief, although now it feels more profound, more earned. “’S okay. I…okay.” She bites her lip, but Cassian hasn’t tried to pull his hand back, and it emboldens her. “So she’s not going to announce Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor are still alive to the whole of the New Republic then?”

“No.” Cassian’s mouth twists into a bitter kind of smile. “She’s not.”

“'S for the best,” Jyn shrugs, still latched onto his wrist and feeling less guilty about it as he continues to leave it there without resistance. “Would be pretty embarrassing if we did pop back up after all these years.” She gives him a lopsided grin that makes the harsh edges of his own soften. “Especially after all that nice stuff Mothma said about us in our personnel files.”

Cassian’s hand moves on her shoulder, and she lets go immediately, but to her pleased surprise, he doesn’t drop away. He simply slips his palm across her shoulder and curls his fingers gently around the back of her neck. His thumb rests in the hollow under her ear, his fingertips pushing at her bun and knocking it slightly askew. “She did say that you would do extraordinary things,” he murmurs, though he seems to be talking more to himself than her.

“I always wondered why she wrote that,” Jyn closes her eyes and tilts her head back a little, pressing into the curve of his hand. He adjusts his grip immediately, cradling the back of her head, her hair starting to come down from the bun as he moves his fingers through it. “She knew we were alive by then, and working for Organa. I never could figure if she meant it as a request, or more like a warning.”

“A warning?” Cassian’s thumb traces a line along the side of her neck and up around her ear. He’s still standing too far away, and he doesn’t make any further move to touch her, but his hand in her hair is a really good sign. Jyn keeps her eyes closed, her voice meditative.

“Eh, you know,” she pitches her voice in a passable imitation of Mothma’s serene tones. “‘I am covering your extremely fortunate arse, Jyn Erso. You had better do something extraordinary to make it worth the risk.’”

“If Mothma has ever said the word ‘arse’ in her life,” Cassian muses, “I hope someone recorded it.”

Jyn huffs a laugh, which turns into a long, soft sigh, because Cassian’s thumb is tracing back down the side of her neck. It's a gentle touch, an a familiar one; it that doesn’t feel like the touch of a man who is about to –

Well, it feels like a very good sign, indeed.

“I wonder if she’s disappointed,” Jyn hears herself saying, and she’s almost surprised because this is the sort of thought that once upon a time she would have died rather than voice aloud. But…well, that was a long time ago, and this is _Cassian._ Cassian doesn’t judge her for her random, dark, occasionally ridiculous thoughts. Whatever else happens, she knows that will never change. She _thinks_ it will never change.

Fuck, she _hopes._

Cassian’s thumb traces back up to her ear, his hand otherwise steady in her hair. “Mothma?”

“Yeah. Since I never…” Jyn squeezes her eyes shut and makes a random gesture with one hand, hunting for the words. “Lived up to that. Never did anything particularly extraordinary, after Scarif.”

Abruptly, Cassian grabs her chin with his other hand and tilts her head back down. She opens her eyes and finds that he has moved closer after all, almost as close as he normally stands, though not quite there yet. “You have,” he says firmly, shaking her chin a little as if in reproof. His other hand is still buried in her hair, but his fingers have clenched tighter, forcing the tie holding her bun in place to slip. A few strands of her hair spill forward over her cheek. “Jyn. You have done _so much_.”

The intensity of his voice, the pressure of his eyes, it makes the tension in her heart wind tight again, makes her hands itch to reach up and pull him down into a hard kiss. But there is still the question hanging in the air between them, still a hurdle she needs to cross before she dares do anything. So she takes a slow breath, _in and out_ , and gives him the most light-hearted smirk she can muster. “Careful, Commander,” she teases. “Or people will think your concern for me is more than strictly professional.”

To her secret delight, Cassian snorts with derision and slips both hands around the back of her neck. “Good. I would be a piss-poor spouse if they didn’t.”

She grins, but the humor on his face fades quickly, and hers with it. He makes no move either closer or farther, and Jyn is fast reaching the end of her patience. _You must face it,_ Saw reminds her, and so Jyn squares her shoulders. “You know,” she says, stops. Clears her throat and tries again. “We aren’t really married.”

Cassian’s eyes flick across her face, his hands loosen in her hair. “Dar and Karina Hartenstine are married.”

“But they aren’t real.” Jyn shakes her head slightly, and then frowns as Cassian’s hands withdraw even more, now barely touching her.

“Officially,” Cassian’s hands drop to her shoulders, though he still doesn’t move close or away. Her eyes have adjusted now so that she can pick out the way his jaw flexes and his eyes slip partially closed, watching her through his lashes. “They are more real than Jyn Erso or Cassian Andor.”

“Who are dead,” she agrees. Cassian’s hands flex on her shoulders, and she can feel him starting to pull away now, before he’s even lifted his palms from her. “ _Officially_ ,” she says a little too loud, a little too fast, startling him into motionlessness again. “Jyn Erso was dead for fifteen years before you pulled her out of Wobani. But it wasn’t true. It wasn't true then,” she lifts her chin and glowers at him. “And it isn’t now.”

“And Jyn Erso isn’t married to Cassian Andor,” he says flatly.

She’s fucking this up, she knows, but she’s not sure how to fix it. Or even how it’s broken. She’s never been good with this shit, and she’s rarely had to be, not with Cassian. But this…this is important. She needs to know where they stand, and what he wants, however afraid she is to find out the answer. The Alliance is gone. Rebel Intelligence is gone, or at least reformed into something new, something she’s not sure she will recognize when next she sees it. All her many personas, every one of them linked to Cassian’s, they are ending tonight. After Scarif, they had been Alliance Command’s best kept secret, the martyrs who hadn’t actually died. Symbols to the Rebellion on one hand, useful undercover operatives on the other. Only ten people in the entire galaxy had any idea that Jyn was alive, and she and Cassian made up two of those. Even fewer people knew that she and Cassian had stayed on with the Alliance, members of the little-known and never breached Fulcrum network. Cassian had been tied to her, in a way, bound to work with the only other Alliance field operative who knew who he was.

But that’s over now. They will still remain a secret from the world at large, perhaps, but it is – they aren’t – it’s _different_. Their old life is done. A whole galaxy of choices stretches out before them, and she needs to know -

The silence stretches out between them, Cassian’s hands still on her shoulders, his face shadowed. _In and out,_ Chirrut coaches her, _as long as you breathe, there is hope_.

“Jyn,” Cassian says slowly, as if he’s ripping the words out of his body like organs and setting them meticulously at her feet. “Are you telling me that you want to leave?”

“No.” Jyn’s response is quick and decisive, and if she weren’t so worked up herself, she’d probably roll her eyes at him because _seriously?_ That was never even a question. He’s the one who has always had a higher purpose. He’s the one who has always had to struggle between his priorities. Jyn’s a soldier for the Alliance, a sworn enemy of the Empire, and after Jedha, Scarif and Alderaan, she had signed up for the war without hesitation. But her priorities have always been clear: Cassian, the war, everything else. In that order. He’s the one with…complexities. Ideals. Choices that pulled him between duty and desire, need and want. So far, his desires and hers have matched up pretty neatly. But the world has changed and their place in it must, whether they like it or not, change with it.

“I’m only pointing out,” she tries to clarify in a halting tone, not really sure what she's doing but hoping she's at least stumbling in the right general direction. “The Hartenstines are married. And the Howells.” She pauses, thinks. “And the Anfels, aren't they?”

“Engaged.”

“Right.”

Cassian’s hands relax, his own shoulders drop slightly, and when he speaks again, there’s a trace of real amusement in his voice again. “Are you telling me you want to get married?”

“I…” Jyn furrows her brow and thinks about it for a moment. “Guess?”

Her eyes have definitely adjusted to the dim light, because now she can see the thoroughly unimpressed look he’s shooting her. “Convincing, Jyn.”

“I want,” Jyn throws her hands up between them, and at last she’s reached the very end of her patience. _Fuck it._ She steps forward and wraps her arms around Cassian, because he still hasn’t kriffing moved and she can’t hover on the edge like this anymore. To her infinite, glorious relief, he responds immediately, one hand pulling her tie meticulously free so he can wind his fingers through her unbound hair, the other tight around her waist. He hauls her in so close that her spine curves to fit against him, and she has to shuffle her feet around his, their legs half-tangled even standing upright. “I want what I’ve always wanted,” Jyn mumbles into his shoulder, letting him hold her tight, willing his reaction to be the answer she’s been desperately hoping for. It feels like it is, it feels like a good sign, like she’s going to get everything she wants. But she’s thought that before, and been burned. She’s felt hopeful before, and been _left_. This is not something where she can tolerate any ambiguity. She has to _know_.

So she pulls back, meets his eyes.

“Take me with you,” she asks (or demands, or maybe begs), her voice serious and her hands shaking slightly against his back. She winds her fingers harder into his shirt to steady them and keeps going, because she has to face it. She has to. “Wherever you choose to go, whatever you choose to do. _Whoever_ you choose to be.” She draws a breath in, pushes it out. “Take me with you.”

Cassian lets go of her waist, reaches behind him and tugs one of her arms around between them. He pauses when he wraps his hand around hers and feels the tremble in her fingers, and then he closes his eyes and places her hand against his throat. Under her fingertips, she can feel his pulse hammering wildly, his skin flushed deeper than she could see in the darkness. “Six years,” he says hoarsely, “and you still do this to me. I'd have thought I'd gain at least a little immunity by now.”

The tension snaps inside her, replaced by a joy so bright and consuming she’s a little lightheaded with it. She clears her throat and forces her voice into a solemn tone. “Well, maybe you will someday.”

Cassian opens his eyes, and Jyn flashes him the biggest, brightest smile she can, a smile so wide it feels like her cheeks might crack under the strain. He blinks, his jaw slack, staring at her like he can’t quite believe she’s real. “But I hope not,” she tells him cheerfully, and then she rises up on her tiptoes and claims his mouth in a hard kiss. He recovers admirably, both arms around her again so tight that he actually lifts her a little from the ground, and when she laughs against his lips, she can feel him smiling back. She can feel his breath catching against her, in and out in time with her own. Whatever else happens, she decides as Cassian’s hands tug her shirt free from her trousers – he runs his hands insistently up her bare back, making her own breath stutter in response – whatever happens, they are still breathing. Wherever they go, she knows they will go together.

It’s all she’s ever wanted.

 


	10. Inner Glow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally written for an anon on tumblr, who prompted: _"Jyn + Gardens/Plants (because the quote 'the landscape after cruelty, which is of course a garden, which is a tenderness')_. Posted after reminded by RavenRedemption that I hadn't moved this one over. Thanks!

The wound should have killed him.

It was too deep, too wide, too filthy from running through the burning streets and scrabbling through the rubble and muck of the ruined city outskirts. He’d lost too much blood, though he’d done his best to stifle the flow with his dirty jacket and his dirtier hands. By the time Jyn had dragged him into the wilderness outside the city walls, by the time they had found a narrow but deep crag in the rocky terrain and limped their way underground, by the time he slumped against the cave wall and let his head fall back against the rough, cool black rock, it was too late. They had nothing but a tube of bacta gel and a blood-booster, which wouldn’t be enough. Already his limbs felt heavy as lead, his mind fuzzing around the edges, the grey that he lived his life inside creeping in all around to consume him at last.

A part of him – a bigger part than he liked to think about, usually – wanted to just close his eyes and…go. Just let it be done. Let the story spin on without him.

But the rest of him was stubborn, and angry, and he had too much to do yet, too many wrongs to right, too many debts, too many sins, and more than that, more than any of that –

Jyn was gone.

Panic surged through Cassian, momentarily driving the pain and lethargy back, and he tried to shove himself up to his feet. His feet slipped under him, his head swam and the cave floor seemed to tilt and dance but if she was gone, if she fell and he didn’t see if she was hurt if something had grabbed her –

“Sit,” a firm hand on his shoulder shoved him back to the ground, and Cassian grunted as the relatively short fall still knocked the wind from him. The little light of their emergency flare seemed to go out, but then he blinked and his vision cleared. Jyn crouched in front of him, the blood-booster prepped in her hand. Cassian meant to push her hand away (let her keep the booster for herself, it wouldn’t help him but it might save her, later) but the fear lingered in his veins so instead he clamped down on her wrist and pulled her weakly in towards him.

“You were gone,” he mumbled, and Jyn frowned at him.

“No.” And then she injected the blood booster into his arm, pushing his sleeve up roughly and then yanking it back down when she was done, rubbing her palms over his arms to warm his clammy skin. He could feel the faint burn of the booster rushing through his veins, replicating his blood cells. There wasn’t enough in the booster to replace all the blood he had lost, but if he survived the next hour, it would get him back on his feet.

Of course, he wasn’t about to survive the next hour, so it was pointless. He tried to open his mouth and tell Jyn she was wasting resources, she had to go now and get out, even though he wanted to cling to her and ask her to stay, _just stay until I’m asleep, stay until I won’t miss you, won’t be alone, please_ , but no, there was no time. She had to go.

Rough but warm hands at his waist, jerking up his shirt to look at the ugly cut along his ribs and guts. Her face paled in the dim light of the flare, and Cassian guessed she could see more of his insides than anyone ever should, but he didn’t look down. He didn’t need to see it, he’d felt the…the squish, when he put his hand there to hold himself together and run.

Jyn had the bacta gel tube in her hand. Cassian would have laughed, but there was only just enough left in him for a little more, and he needed to use it for her. “Waste,” he said as loudly and clearly as his thick, dry tongue would allow. “Jyn. _Jyn_.”

She grabbed his hand as he tried to bat weakly at her, and suddenly her mouth was on his, and she tasted like blood and hope and Jyn, Jyn, _Jyn_ and then she pulled away and glared at him. “Stop talking,” she ordered. “And stop trying to get me to leave.”

And then she pulled at his shirt again and it almost didn’t even hurt anymore, and all Cassian could do was sit there and watch her, and wish that he could leave her in a better world than this one.

Her hand was glowing.

Wait.

Her hand was glowing?

“Diathim fungus,” Jyn said loudly and clearly, holding her hand up in front of his face. It glowed, a soft pinkish-gold, and Cassian just managed to focus his fading vision long enough to see that the glow didn’t come from her skin but rather a series of tiny rose-gold polyps of some kind. It looked like Jyn had dipped her hand in a vat of shining honey, actually, and Cassian’s brain spiraled away for a few minutes trying to imagine how a vat of glowing honey could have shown up in a cave under a war zone.

And then something cool and sweet spread across his side, and when he opened his eyes again (had he closed them? shouldn’t do that) he saw Jyn smearing the bacta all over his ribs and stomach, and then carefully pressing the glow into the open edges of his wound. He cringed a little when her fingers slid past the open skin and probed delicately into his gut, but the pain was already fading. “It’s alright, Cassian,” Jyn said near his ear. “This place is covered in it, further on,” she was saying, or he dreamed that she was saying, “It eats bacta, and it then it replicates it. It’s going to fix you. Nothing major was,” she cleared her throat, a harsh sound that startled him and he winced because being startled meant pain lancing through his chest but then her hands were on him again and she was murmuring, “Cassian, it’s okay. Stay with me. Just stay. You’ll be fine. Scanner says no major internal organ ruptures. It’s just that you…”

Her voice blurred and ran together into a pleasant hum, like engines in hyperspace, he thought, with the rushing whisper of light streaking around them. Every now and again he could pluck out his name, and he pulled those little glimmers of light in and stared at them, marveled at the rose-gold glow of his name said so softly, so kindly, like it was a good name, like she wanted to say it, like she wanted him to stay.

She wanted him to stay.

He could…he could stay.

If she wanted.

“What the ever-lovin’ fuck, Erso?”

Cassian opened his eyes. A tall man stood over where Cassian was flat on his back, and normally this would be cause for some panic, but Jyn’s hand was on his chest and his head was…in her lap, yes, he was lying with his head in Jyn’s lap, and her hand was flat against his chest, not bunched up in a fist, not armed, so the tall man was no threat to her and thus no threat to him. Cassian relaxed, and watched with distant amusement as the tall man’s mouth opened and closed.

“Diathim fungus,” Jyn explained. “Also called Angel’s Glow. It’s a bacta-replicating - ”

“I know what the kark it is,” the tall man dropped to his knees next to Cassian and behind him there was a droid – oh, a medical droid, good, this was a medic, and he knew Jyn, alright, looked like they were being extracted. Jyn must have set up a beacon. She must have…there were no Alliance forces in this system?

Shit, how long had he been out?

“Two days,” Jyn answered, and he realized he’s just said that out loud. Her voice was tight, and the medic shot her a concerned look which concerned Cassian, it was all very concerning, but he could barely move so the best he could do was grope for her hand on his chest and hold on. Fortunately, she did most of the heavy lifting, reaching to wrap her warm fingers around his cold ones. “The diathim kept him alive,” she told the medic. “I kept it fed and it kept him alive.” She held up the empty bacta tube, which Cassian could see had been squeezed and flattened down until it was as empty as possible, no drop of the precious healing fluid left.

“Yeah, and now he’s glowing like a fucking Angel himself,” the medic muttered. “Look at this shit. I’m going to have to tank him for a karking _week_ just to get it all out of his insides. I can...shit, I can see the shadow of his ribs through his...skin.”

“It kept him alive,” Jyn snarled, and Cassian tried to squeeze her fingers. She did, she kept him alive, it was okay. They were okay.

“Yeah,” the medic sighed, said something to the droid, who bustled back up out towards the distant light of the cave opening. “You know what? I'm over it. Just keep him still a moment longer, okay?"

Jyn's voice dropped from snarl to dry murmur. Tired. She must be tired. Awake for two days while he slept and glowed and listened to the hum of her voice. "Glowing man not the weirdest thing you've seen in this job, Atkin?"

"Shit, Erso, I've been running on Commander Solo's medic team for the last couple months. This ain't even the weirdest thing I've seen this _week_. Good job you knew how to keep the fungus from over-propagating in his system, I’ll tell you, or it would be growing out his ears at this point. Might still do, if we don’t get him on the table and then in the tank in a right hurry. But hey, who doesn’t love a good challenge, right?” He sighed again, shook his head, and glowered at Cassian’s stomach (which was, he realized with a little jolt, the source of the bright rose-gold light that he had assumed was a lantern).

More booted feet, more medics, the faint whine of a hover stretcher engine, and then hands were grabbing him and lifting him up, up, a painful jolt as he settled on the stretcher and then needles pricking at his arms and a mask over his face, but Cassian groped wildly because his hands were empty and that wasn’t – he didn’t want – _Jyn!_

“I’m here,” she said, and his hand was warm again. “Stop struggling, Cassian. They’re trying to help. And I’m here,” her voice dropped, and Cassian forced his eyes open again (damn it, when had they closed? He was slipping again), “I’m here.”

 _Stay,_ he thought, still a little wildly, and though he was almost sure he didn’t say it out loud, Jyn leaned over and pressed a kiss to his forehead and answered him anyway. “I promise.”


End file.
